


The Maiden in the Tower

by simplyprologue



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: F/M, Future Fic
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-12-16
Updated: 2013-07-02
Packaged: 2017-11-21 06:09:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 27,948
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/594354
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/simplyprologue/pseuds/simplyprologue
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There's a story that the smallfolk tell about Sansa Stark and the night she threw herself from the Eyrie. Westeros is six years into winter, and two unlikely people find their way to the Vale where they find out an unlikely truth about the night that Sansa Stark was supposed to have died and the light that can be still be seen shining from the Eyrie. WIP.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> **A/N:** Well, this was developed from my relatively crack interpretations of several prophecies and desire to reinterpet a lot of the tropes in sansan fic of just how exactly Sandor and co rescue Sansa from the Vale. Not entirely sure how long this will run, but it will be a more run-on fic than what I've published previously, hopefully updating at least once a week.
> 
>  **Warnings:** Suicide, canon sexual abuse.

She climbs the steps in haste. _I must get away, I must get out_ , her mind screams. But there is no escape from here, from Petyr's ambitions and his games. Her bridal cloak slips heavily from her shoulders and for the first time in years she feels weightless, climbing the steps to the tower with mighty abandon, ignoring the shouts coming from behind her.

_I must get out._

She still feels the Septa's stare, the shake of her head, Anya Waynwood's maid rushing from the room to inform her mistress. _Not a maid._ The cloak means nothing now. She is not a Stark. She is the wife of Tyrion Lannister.

_I must get out of this place of shadows and lies._

She orchestrated it this way, but never factored in Petyr's heavy blows. She had tampered with his plan, taken her life, her freedom, her fate, into her own hands.

Sansa Stark, at last and alone, flings open the heavy wooden door to the tower. The windows are tall, the panes made to be opened.

"I am Sansa Stark, the heir of Winterfell," she mumbles, rubbing at the silver silk covering her arms. "I am Sansa Stark." The words Petyr had practiced with her, for her to say in front of the crowds as she appeared in silver and grey dappled silks, heavy white velvet and fine white furs, a direwolf emblazoned on her bridal cloak.

"I am Sansa Stark."

She opens the window, and faces herself to the snowy night air, the shouts growing louder and footsteps closing in.

"I am Sansa Sta--!"


	2. The Farmer's Tale

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> And so it begins.

"They call 'er the Maiden in the Tower. Turned out not be much of a maiden, but still," the man said over the rim of his tankard. "Aye, that Lady Stark. Claimed to be a virgin til the end, but then again, who would want to own to having fucked the Imp? Flung herself off the tallest tower in the Eyrie the night she was supposed to be married to Harry the Heir. Not that it matters much with 'im dead now, an' all."

The girl, once called Arya, now wearing the face of a peasant girl named Eirine, sits back in the corner of the pub, calming sipping her ale without truly drinking it. The Vale was one of the last safe places in Westeros. Six years into winter, and they have not yet been disturbed by the Others slowly making their way down the swathes of open plains stretching across the North and the Riverlands. As the other kingdoms fell, the Vale boomed, crowded with pale, emaciated refugees and fat lordlings hoping to wait out the siege until spring, hidden inside the mountains that the Others appear to be unable to cross.

Her sister is dead. Her sister is a song herself, now, the passing imprint of a story. A thing to be mocked, the ironic Maiden in the Tower. Still, she turns her ear towards the drunk tenant farmer repeating the story that, Eirine thinks, will soon become a song.

 _(How fitting_ , the eleven year old who lies in wait in the back of her mind thinks. She may not have become a queen, but Sansa will still go down in history in a song.)

He's got quite the bit of a crowd. Hungry, Eirine thinks. Not enough food to go around, even with all the supplies and stores brought in from Essos. The greasy stew she's been pushing around with her spoon cost thrice as much as it did four years ago. So instead the villagers fill their bellies with ale. Her eyes scan the room, an old habit, falling upon a large, broad-shouldered man in the robes of a Brother, his face masked in shadows.

"They still say you can see 'er at night, Lady Stark—well, Lady Lannister—in 'er tower. Sometimes, when the sky is clear, and all the lights are out, you can look up to the Eyrie as abandoned as it is, and see the light on, in the tallest room in the tallest tower. Some say you can hear 'er wailing in her shame, before the light goes out. That's when you know 'er ghost has thrown herself off again, and let the wind drop 'er down into the rocks. Or maybe let the wind bring her soul back to the Seven Heavens. No flying away into the night like she did when she murdered the Mad King Joffrey. Aye, she wanted to die. That was what, some four years ago now?"

The crowd murmurs in agreement.

"Such a waste," the farmer concludes. "She was a pretty one, they say. Even when she was playing at being Lord Baelish's bastard, not the highborn maid that she was."

The Brother rustles in his seat, one of the layers in his thick robes shifting to reveal a sword belt, the hilt of sword too nice to belong to some common begging brother. Eirine subtly cranes her neck to look at his face. Could it be? But how? (Then again, she thinks, the same could be said of herself. She may not have found Arya Stark along the road home, but she was no longer simply no one.)

The lighting shifts—a serving girl lights more candles—and the Brother does not shift into the shadows in time, the light illuminating old familiar scars.

How? Eirine thinks. The Hound is dead. Arya Stark left him for dead. Years ago. Gods, it seems like lifetimes ago. Lifetimes ago, indeed; there are several names and lives and faces between Eirine Stone and Arya Stark. The winter had made fools of them all, from Castle Back to Dorne. (Well, the girl thinks. Perhaps not Dorne. Not yet. Winter and the Others have not reached them. Yet. But all men can die.)

Except, it seems, Sandor Clegane.  
  


* * *

  
She lives on in his dreams. Lives on to be his tormenter, his jailer. Before the Quiet Isle fell to the Others, he would spend the time the Elder Brother allotted for him to pray knelt awkwardly before the Maiden, thinking on her. Where the statue of the Maiden stood, there she was—hands outstretched, hair falling in curls to her waist. Stone. A dead thing, a girl forever a maiden, a small, gentle smile on her cold face.

No, this bloody nightmarish winter could come and go and Sansa Stark would still be the Maiden. He would kneel before her at night, and she would raise his dagger to her throat and drag it across her delicate pale skin. Or she would stumble and fall down the stairs of the Serpentine, over and under herself again, and at the bottom she would lay in a blossoming red heap, streams of red gurgling from her broken body. He has found peace, or whatever the buggering Elder Brother would have called it, in the daytime.

But never in the night.

They had fled in time; the Elder Brother was no moron or stubborn ass. He had seen the signs of impending doom and sent ravens south, asking for sanctuary for him and his simple brothers. Littlefucker had answered with a most gracious—and safest, Sandor begrudgingly admits—offer to host the brothers of the Quiet Isle with the rest of his household at the Gates of the Moon, with all the protection the Vale had to provide in these dark times.

And so here he is, Sansa Stark's ghost his most constant companion in the place where she died.

At least there's ale, here. Sandor has always found life (and Sansa Stark) much more stomachable if he's drunk, and there was a distinct wanting for Dornish sour on the Quiet Island.

The crowd is livelier, had been the past few weeks, since word came from King's Landing that Cersei, the fucking bitch queen, was dead, found face down in her pillows one morning, blue in the lips and without a breath in her body.

No one spoke of murder; there were too many directions for the finger to point for any accusation to end well for those who had decided to remain in King's Landing as winter's grip drew nearer. Instead those with the motive and intent slunk quietly into mourning, tensely going through the courtesies of a queen's funeral and moving on with quiet, tip-toed steps.

And so it is the disgraced Jaime Lannister who now serves as regent of the rather broken realm.

Politics, it seems, is a game for summer. In winter, it is only death that rules.

He wonders how Baelish's plan all fell apart, before the little Lord Arryn's miraculous recovery from his fits and trembling. It's known that the Septa who examined the girl had found no sign of her maidenhead, and instead Harry the bleeding Heir went and hitched himself to a Royce, making himself even more heirs (and bastards) in years since, waiting on the boy to up and die already while his recovery slipped away. But with the Riverlands overrun with plague and the walking dead, Littlefinger appears to be in no hurry to hasten his leave from the Vale, and is intent on making the boy live however long and painfully as it may be.

Which, of course, was the purpose of his offer to the Elder Brother.

The farmer, finished with this tale, begins another, of a Dragon Queen across the sea. Sandor, quite done with stories and people for the night, leaves his tankard and half a piece of silver on the table.

He shirks out of the inn, not noticing the slip of a girl trailing behind him.  
  


* * *

  
It's too much of an easy thing, so slit the scullery maid's throat and take on her face. Mollye, she is now, a face much easier to wear than pretty Eirine's, who attracted far too much attention in places like dirty, crowded Inns.

She won't go back.

She killed Cersei. It was full circle. She doesn't have to go back now... but she also doesn't have anywhere else to go. A few years ago she would have searched out Jon at the Wall, but he is dead. Bran, missing. Rickon, nowhere to be found. And Robb... dead, almost longest of all. And Sansa. Perhaps she was drawn here because it was the closest grave. (Not that her sister had one, her bones coming to rest upon the battered rocks under the Eyrie.)

She is not unused to hard labor, and waits out the night to formulate a plan. She killed Cersei-would have killed Joffrey too, if the bugger hadn't already been dead. Her father is avenged. The least she can do is take care of the man most responsible for Sansa's death... she killed a queen. The Lord Baelish would be of little consequence after a queen, after a Lannister.

Mollye chatters idly with her fellow maids, tending to the fires and the kitchens, scrubbing her hands coarse and calloused. It is not until midday that she lays eyes upon Lord Baelish and the Elder Brother, sequestered together in his solar (Lord Royce's solar), and Mollye brings new coals for the fire.

They speak freely around her, a baseborn maid of dim complexion and dull mind.

"My Lord Baelish," the Elder Brother says, voice low. "I am not certain how much longer the boy will be able to... we may have to soon concede that it would be a better kindness to let him slip away peacefully, rather than to keep him alive in such a state as he is in now."

She makes it appear that she is not dragging the motions along to tend to the fire; she does not presume to think that they are paying much mind to her, but it would not be smart to dwell, no matter how much she wishes to hear the conversation.

"Brother..." Littlefinger begins. "This boy is the last son of the House of Arryn. He is the only surviving member of House Tully, and is all I have left of my dear, dead wife."

"I... understand," the Brother responds carefully. "I am afraid, though, my lord, that there is not much left that I can do for him."

"He must be kept alive. No matter the cost. I will pay it."

Oh, Mollye thinks. You will pay. I will get the full truth of it, and then you will pay. She does not easily believe the farmer's tale, but all stories begin with seeds of truths, before they are sown as lies to feed the smallfolk.

She looks to the Elder Brother. She thinks she might want the truth of it from him, too, of how the Hound came to live and breathe and walk, when Arya Stark left him for dead. She did not kill the Hound, but Arya Stark denied him the mercy of a quick death. It was something worse she did, Mollye now knows. But mercy is not a gift chastely given, the lover's breath, a quick and painless death. Ayra Stark had no love lost for Sandor Clegane.

"What we will need, to keep the young lord alive--"

Mollye stands, quietly collecting her things and moving noiselessly from the room. "It will be done," she hears Littlefinger say, dismissing the Elder Brother with assertions that men will be sent for the sought-after ingredient. The two men follow out after her, paying no heed to the mousy maid taking calculated steps a few paces ahead of them.

She chooses the path the Elder Brother will take, back to his humble chambers on the ground floor.

She does not hesitate at the hulking figure waiting outside the Elder Brother's rooms, but her measured steps, while they do not slow, become smaller. Just a fraction. Just for-

"Brother Sandor," the Elder Brother rumbles. "Thank you for waiting. Let us discuss these matters inside..."

Arya Stark had no love lost for the Hound. However, he still may be of use to her, his dying words still on her mind.

He has cause to kill Littlefinger as well.  
  


* * *

  
"I still don't have a clue how Baelish hasn't put it together yet. He has bleeding spies all over the castle." The hood is gone, revealing the scars that would undoubtedly reveal the man who owned them. "He must know that I'm here."

"Probably," the Elder Brother agrees. "But no doubt he finds it more astute to not mention it. He may come to you in time, come to bargain with the man you once were, only to find that a new one has taken his place."

"When?" Sandor rasps, back to the Elder Brother, looking determinedly out the window up to the Eyrie, obscured by clouds and the afternoon's storm of flurries. "And bugger, _why_?"

It is almost like King's Landing again, the Gates this winter, almost driving him back into drink. Littlefucker would be no kinder master than any Lannister, and would be must smarter.

The Elder Brother takes a drought of spiced wine. "He is running out of time. Young Sweetrobin is on his deathbed-because of Lord Baelish's doing, of course, but I believe Baelish never wanted it to progress this far, at least, not before the Lady Sansa ruined his... plans. He has not poisoned the boy in years, but the long term effects of the poison in his body has ruined it. If Robert dies, then he has no power here. The Lords of the Vale will run him out before the boy's body is cold."

"I should have gone. When I had the chance." His voice is gruff, hand working hard over the ruined muscle of his thigh. "You knew, and  _you told me to stay away_."

"I did not know if the girl was here of her own accord or not. She seemed to be safest with Lord Baelish," he counters, voice still infuriatingly calm.  _Safer than with you, you lame, angry drunk_ , the sentence hangs, unfinished. The twisted muscle in Sandor's leg twinges, the limb flaring with pain sharper than fire. It is a much different pain than a burn, these strange rebirths he has experienced.

He reigns in his anger the best he is able; his voice is still terse, temper roiling beneath the tightly-coiled surface. "And then she died."

"Hmm..." The Elder Brother stands, joining Sandor at the window. "You've heard the song about her, the Maiden in the Tower?"

"About her ghost." He remembers the farmer's irreverent words, hooting laughter, the jeers of the common men.

"That's what the song says, yes."

"What about it?" Sandor grits, turning away from the window and the tower where Sansa Stark threw herself to her untimely death. (A mercy, he reminds himself. A mercy. Death is mercy. Death would have been a mercy for him to, rather than this penniless and useless existence.)

"The truth may not be... quite as simple."

Sandor growls. "I'll try to follow."

The Elder Brother laughs kindly, shaking his head. "If this is how your temper flares at even the mere mention of the lady... look at me." The Elder Brother grows somber, and when he speaks again, his voice is grave. "Lord Baelish has gone mad with paranoia, mad with power. He is a small man who has climbed too high, and is about to be toppled. He has gone to lengths that are beyond the realm of what most would call sane."

"And?"

A gust of wind clears the snow for a scant moment, revealing a barest glimpse of the Eyrie, miles above their heads.

"Sansa Stark may very well have never left that tower like the stories say."

It hits him in the belly like a fist, or the pommel of a sword. The snow picks up again, clouding over the high-away castle made of snow. "You mean--"

"Sansa Stark may very well be alive."


	3. The Light in the Tower

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sandor forms a plan, and Arya messes it up. Neither has the whole story.

"Seven hells!" he sputters, stumbling backwards. " _What?_ "

"I know that you… cared for the girl, in your way." The Elder Brother calmly runs his fingers along the polished wood window frame. "We both know that your treatment of her while you were both in Kings Landing is one of your biggest regrets, from your past life."

"You were the one who told me to  _not_  go after her, when you found out she was here." He does not seethe, but the anger boils. "In the Vale. You were the one who told me she was here. You said she'd be safe. And we all know now how _great_ that turned out."

"I misunderstood Lord Baelish's intentions for the girl, and for that I am truly sorry." His voice is deliberately calm. "And now I have cause to believe that the lady did not kill herself, which makes it our recompense to save her. My recompense. And so I ask, Sandor—do you want the task of rescuing the lady from the Eyrie?"

Sandor freezes, and then rubs his palm over the mass of twisted muscle covering his thigh. "What makes you believe she is alive?"

"All songs are rooted in some sort of truth."

"Yes," Sandor cuts in. "And the truth of it is that she flung herself from the Eyrie, and now she's dead  _when I could have saved her._ "

"No, the truth of it is that Lord Baelish stopped the Lady Sansa, locked her away in the Eyrie's tallest tower, and then encouraged this ridiculous story of the ruined maiden killing herself over her lost virtue." The Elder Brother's voice is frustratingly calm. Sandor's eyes narrow, watching him circle the room to his desk, where he sits and sifts through sheaves of parchment. "She is still much more important to him alive, much like the little Lord Arryn, bless his sorry soul. The Lady is still the heir to Winterfell… and Lord Baelish has gone mad with his twisted punishment of her… for whatever slight he feels she has committed against him. The poor maid never left the tower, by way of killing herself or otherwise."

"She… wasn't a maid," he answers dumbly.

The Elder Brother gives a short, cynical laugh. "We do not know the truth of that either, Sandor. The decision of the lady's virginity was a matter for sale to the Septa who performed the examination, and she was still masquerading as Alayne Stone when the exam was completed."

Sandor gives a rough, agreeing sort of snort, before ambling over to the roughly-hewn chair before the Elder Brother's desk. "Aye."

"Lady Anya Waynwood was, if I have my judgments correct, not fond of being backed into a corner in regards to her nephew's marriage prospects."

"She wouldn't have turned her nose up at Sansa Stark."

"No," the Elder Brother replies, opening a pot of ink in order to reply to an unnamed missive. "But Alayne Stone was of no worth to marry the next Lord of the Vale."

"But the boy wasn't so sick, back then."

The Brother smiles wryly. "Lord Baelish brought me here to correct the misjudgments of his maester, who thought the boy could survive much more of the toxin than his fragile body could."

"So now he's been backed into his own bleeding corner," Sandor growls. "But he's not like to fight proper. Baelish is just a sorry Mockingbird."

"That is correct."

"So he's going to pull out his fucking—his fucking back-up plan. The girl." His face twists into mean curves, the shadows of cruelty and anger appearing on his face for the first time in years. The urge—for violence, for bloodshed—awakens, and he has the sword at his hip to deliver the feeling to fruition, should he choose. He has no master now, and while he is free from the machinations of others, he is also the only master of his own faults, his own consequences. He will have to govern his urges wisely. "So we save the girl before he gets to her."

"Give the Lady Sansa the opportunity to make her own choices in this matter, yes."

"So what do you think his—his buggering  _plan_  is for her now?" He stands again, pacing, his footsteps sounding out angry rounds on the stone floor.

The Elder Brother hesitates, quill scratching lightly over the paper. "I believe… he intends to marry her and make a run North."

Sandor barks a laugh. "Now that's suicide!"

The Brother huffs. "Lord Baelish is not a well man."

"I'd say!" His fingers travel over the length of his sword. "So how has 'e been keeping her alive? There's no one up at the Eyrie but her and the rats—and maybe even they were smart enough to move down to the Gates for the winter."

Stranger is stabled with the other horses being kept at the Gates—while still a stubborn son of a bitch he wouldn't be too missed if he slipped out. If Baelish knows that he's here, one of his spies would notice the destrier was missing. The Elder Brother would have to come up with some cover story; some reason he's left the Gates of the Moon that won't draw suspicion.

"Anyone's guess, Sandor."

He doesn't know how much by way of provisions he'll need, but it'll be bleeding cold on the road up to the Eyrie, but there also shouldn't be anyone to draw attention with if he lights a fire to keep warm. He tries to figure how long it would take for one man to make the journey unaided.

He realizes the Elder Brother has answered.

"Your guess, then."

The Elder Brother purses his lips contemplatively. "He probably pays a maid to stay up there—or two. They're probably subsisting on dried cheese and salted meats, aged wines, melted snow. From what I've been able to discern, Lord Baelish sends a company of men up to the Eyrie every few months to ensure that it hasn't been occupied by… undesirables. They probably take up all the other stores and rations."

"How do you know that I won't be running into one of his companies of paid men?" Sandor asks.

He snorts. "The latest party to go up came back last week—I do not think Lord Baelish will hazard another journey for a while yet. I was able to speak to a few of his men."

"And what? Did one of them speak?"

"No, they're all bought and paid for. I was fed whatever they're supposed to tell outsiders." He finishes his letter, standing to bring it closer to the fire to dry. "Besides, I doubt they've seen her. There's a reason smallfolk only ever see a light in the tallest tower."

The Elder Brother leaves the letter on his desk, rounding the room again to return to the window. "She's there, Sandor." His voice is softer, tone kinder. "I am sure of it. Here is your chance. You promised her you would keep her safe, and then you held a knife to her throat and left her to the lions. You want to keep her safe? Here is your  _real_  chance."

Fear creeps up, blanketing the anger, the bloodlust. What if he cannot? His leg has unmanned him—its strength is no longer something he can rely on, and a trip to the Eyrie in winter is a trial for a party of twenty men—it is an obstacle near insurmountable for one. Sandor Clegane is no longer young, or healthy. Clearer-headed, perhaps, but he has also not wielded a sword in an actual fight in nigh on six years. He has the anger and the drive to fuel him, but he is aware that his body may very well fail him where his mind will not.

And even if…

Even if he finds her, will she go with him?

He knows, now, that she had good reason to avert her eyes in King's Landing, to shirk away, to avoid his face. He knows that he cannot expect her to forgive him.  
But even if…

If he does not try to save her at all, knowing her situation as it is now, he will not deserve her forgiveness at all.

He joins the Elder Brother at the window. It is not nearly dark enough to see the light that the smallfolk claim to see on the clearest of these somber winter nights.

"When can I leave?"    
  


* * *

  
Mollye slips back into Littlefinger's chambers after he leaves for another meeting. She'll go through the Elder Brother's things later, in between the evening feast and when she'll be required to go back to the scullery.

No one ever suspects the maid.

Or women in general, really.

_Weak, we're called._

She used to think women were weak, too, truth be told. Thought that strength was found in picking up a sword. Thought that strength could _only_  be found in picking up a sword. But now… now she has spent too much time as maids and peasant girls to know otherwise. She used to wonder how a woman could allow herself to be in such positions, allow herself to be with a husband who hits and rapes or a landlord who steals and takes… and now she knows.

Men. She hates them all.

(She loved her father, and she loved Jon, and she loved Robb. She had loved Bran and Rickon. But now all of them are dead. And so is Mother, and so is Sansa. And so is Arya, and whatever love Arya once held in her heart.)

She hates Littlefinger most of all.

His papers and ledgers are meticulously well-kept, stacked neatly atop his desk. Mollye runs her slim, knobby fingers along the leather spines. She is not certain of what she is looking for.

Proof, she guesses.

Evidence of guilt, beyond hearsay.

Some, like the stupid fucking farmer, say that the Lady Sansa jumped. That the Fallen Woman Jumped.

But Mollye knows that sometimes, Fallen Women are Pushed. And even if they are fallen at all, it is not the business of men to judge. (Mollye is eighteen, perhaps, and perhaps takes to the laps of more powerful men for a bit of coin. But the girl who wears her face is younger still, and still experienced in the ways of lust and men.) And like all tales… Sansa's is sometimes told differently, by those who don't like Lord Baelish as much as the refugees, the happy innkeepers. The paid-off knights.

Some say that the Lady Sansa was pushed.

(Either way, she wonders. Does it matter? Littlefinger is still guilty of much more, if Cersei's dying words were true.)

_Ilyn. Meryn. Queen Cersei. Dunsen. Raff the Sweetling._

She's killed three—Ilyn, Meryn, and now Cersei are gone. Whatever happened to Dunsen and Raff she does not know—but she brought those three to their ends. She adds Petyr Baelish to her list.

Quickly, she pulls a bundle of letters from their place. She has spied on many  _great men_. Predictable, all of them, unlike the women they have forced into darkness. It is those women who have learned to walk without noise or casting a shadow who are the ones to be feared.

Like Cersei. Who went down fighting like a lioness. No one would believe the tale of  _how_ , no matter who told it, Mollye thinks.

She hesitates.

Like many things, it's a tale best left untold. Let the smallfolk think what they want.

 _Littlefinger_ , she thinks. How will she kill him? Poison is always an option. And there are ways to kill a man's insides without it showing on the outside. Or she could kill him in one of the bloodier ways, one of the more painful ways. He would deserve it, she thinks. But she would need to set it up so someone else would take the fall. Or Mollye could… the real Mollye is dead. The girl underneath the mask knows it's only a matter of time before someone uncovers the body (the ground is too hard to bury, and Mollye too big to drag to the river, and she won't taint the drinking water she'll be consuming by throwing the body in the well) and an alarm is raised.

It would work.

Mollye tucks the letters into her heavy underskirts, to be examined in one of the unoccupied rooms. It's not safe to stay, if she wishes to remain undiscovered.

Lifting Littlefinger's dirty clothing into her arms, she lowers her head and slinks back out into the hall.  
  


* * *

  
Mollye sequesters herself into one of the unused bedrooms much later in the evening, squinting in the dim candlelight to read the fine, looped script. Correspondence from Alayne, the bastard daughter Sansa had played, to her  _father_  during one of Littlefinger's trips to Harrenhal before all had gone to shit with the Others and the Vale sealed itself up tight.

Dated the months before Sansa was to be wed to Harry the Heir, they detail the day-to-day ongoings of the Eyrie in a more mature version of the handwriting the girl once knew. The words are familiar, the turns of phrase, and soon the high, girlish voice returns to her head as well, reading the letters to the girl who is more than Mollye, more than No One.

_Dearest Father,_

_Sweetrobin's health has improved in your absence, and we all rejoice and thank the Gods for their mercy. The other day the maester recommended the fresh air may improve his health, so we bundled him into his warmest clothes and I personally took him for a turn about the garden. He enjoyed playing in the snow, and watching him be so happy gave me joy._

_Lady Waynwood's men have come again, and plan on staying the week before their mistress joins them. They say they wish to learn the lay of the castle for the safety of their mistress and her charge, my betrothed, but I know that they are interrogating the maids and our knights, both those you have secured and those you have not. I have ordered the ones we know are ours to sequester the ones of who we are less sure._

_Bronze Yohn's injury grows worse, and we fear he may be unable to return Runestone for many more weeks. Lord Andar has written to say that he will join his father here in case he takes a turn for the worse. Lady Ysilla may join him, and I hope for Mya's sake that her husband does not come along as well._

Mollye frowns.

What?

It is so strange for Sansa to be so cordial to this man. Conversational, and conspiratorial, with the man who would kill her for losing her maidenhead. Plotting with him against others. For what? For a marriage to a whoremonger?

 _Gods_ , she thinks, feeling her anger rise and Mollye slipping away.  _Gods, Sansa, what did he tell you? What had he led you to believe?_

Arya forces herself to calm, bringing the aged parchment closer to her lone source of light.  
  


* * *

  
He'll need to do his planning outside of his own room. Sandor knows that Littlefucker has maids searching them, and building up stores and supplies will only tip him off that he's planning something.

If the little piece of shit is paranoid enough to keep Sansa Stark locked away in some tower high, he'll be paranoid enough to suspect that he's going after his precious and pretty prize. He'd bugger himself with a hot poker before he ruined this before he even left.

He creeps (and then laughs at himself for thinking he can creep) into one of the empty rooms on the far side of the keep, closing the door behind him as quickly as possible.  
  


* * *

_  
I fear that Lady Waynwood does not want this wedding to happen. Father, I fear that she does not want Harry to marry a bastard. Our position is not secure, Father. Have you spoken with the Septa who will ascertain my maidenhood for her? Perhaps it should be a Septa from outside the Vale. We do not know the extent of Lady Waynwood's reach. I wish to go home._

Arya feels the rage swirl and grow, inhabiting her muscles where the Faceless Men had once massaged it away with their teachings. Sansa was scared. Arya knows it. This was not some calm, rationed letter. She was scared, and running out of options. She angrily smoothes out the corners of the letter, removing the creases caused by her tensed fingers.

Gods, what she would give to have been in Sansa's head as she wrote this letter.

Overcome by growing temper, Arya roughly pushes her chair back from her self-claimed table, and stands.

"Fucking Littlefinger," she mutters. "Petyr Baelish. Petyr Baelish... I have killed small men and great men, and I will kill you. Your life is the price. It is not the price you deserve, but it is the one I can exact."

_All men must die._

And she will be the one to swing the sword.  
  


* * *

  
There is already a candle lit, the room already occupied, and if the face was not—Sandor knows the face. The long, hollow features, the grey eyes, the dark hair, the anger, the murderous rage.

"Bloody hells!" The exclamation escapes him before he can control it.

The girl, a sodding teenager now, looks up and pales, backing herself up against the window ledge like she is ready and willing to escape up and over it. Her eyes rake over him; Sandor realizes she is not surprised, just taking advantage of her flight instinct.

"You…" he says. Arya Stark, is supposedly up North, married to the Bastard of Bolton. And yet she stands before him, looking much like he last saw her. "You're…"

"And you," she answers hotly. "You're not dead."

"You knew that, I can see. Can't see how you'd know that, though." He backs up, wary.

She snorts. "Been following you, yeah."

"Oh, that's proper," he scoffs. "Following a grown man around."

Arya screws up her face, disgusted. "Not like that, you moron. Seven hells! Besides," she draws a small dagger from her skirts—Sandor has to look again. Arya Stark, in skirts. He figures she's been passing herself off as a maid, then. "What are you doing here, Brother Sandor?"

"I'm with the Elder Brother," he snorts. "And here I thought you had gone and grown up a bit and maybe turned out smart."

"I know you're with the bloody Elder Brother," she responds, fighting to keep her voice down. It's then that Sandor's attentions are drawn to the letters open on the table, but Arya keeps his focus by waving her dagger closer to his face. "How the fuck are you alive?"

"Could say the same to you, if you're not up North like you're supposed to be, holed up in the Bolton compound."

Arya laughs, the shadows dancing on her face. "They're dead. You didn't know? They're all dead."

Sandor knits his eyebrows together. "That's not what the Elder—"

"Oh sod the Elder Brother." She hastily binds the letters together again. "The news has reached King's Landing. Did a few weeks ago."

"A few…" He tilts his head, hand resting on the pommel of his sword. "Girl, you were in King's Landing when Cersei was killed."

She shrugs.

"What are you in the Vale for?"

"It's the safest place in the Seven Kingdoms."

He snorts. "Bullshit."

"Well, it is!"

"Aye, it is, but that's not the reason you're here, little girl."

Arya scoffs, crossing her arms under her small bust and turning away from him, facing the paned windows. "To kill Littlefinger, not that it's any of your business."

Sandor lets out a deep, rumbling laugh, bending at the waist. He can hear her rankle with disgust, making guttural noises of discontent, before finally mumbling, "Go fuck yourself. I'm going to do it. He killed my sister. I'm gonna fucking kill him for it."

He stops laughing.

"You know that he—"

She cuts him off immediately, leaning on the window ledge on her elbows. "He as good as." She spits the words out between her teeth. "No matter what the rest of them have judged."

"What if—"

It's supposed to be his job alone… but perhaps its not. Not if Arya Stark is here and alive and capable. And willing.

"What if what?" she asks.

"What if I told you your pretty sister was still alive."

He watches the line of her back tense, face shuttering. "The fuck are you going on about." Not a question; it's a harsh, defensive statement.

He moves closer to her, dagger or not. They're on the side of the castle that faces up to the Eyrie, and there's not a cloud in the sky tonight. _I'll be damned._

The smallfolk are right.

In the black of the night, a single light can be seen from the Eyrie.

"Look," he says, pointing towards the tower.

The wretch follows his finger. Her face is still stony, but he thinks he may see a flicker of hope there. After all, he has the rest of the night to convince her of it, and can ask the Elder Brother for help in the morning.  
  


* * *

  
Miles above the rest of humanity's heads, a raven pecks at the glass of a barred window. A maiden with impossibly long red hair sweeps gracefully to the ledge, one stockinged foot climbing deftly on top of it. She reaches for the top corner, where the glass has been carefully chipped away over time by circumspect hands.

She hangs her lantern in the window, reaching her fingers vigilantly through the ragged glass, and takes the small coil of parchment from the bird's beak.

She leaves the lantern to hang until it burns out. It's a small, foolish, almost childish notion, but it gives her hope.


	4. These Several Years Out to Sea

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sansa recounts her time in the tower thus far. As it is with most songs, nothing is like it seems.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **WARNINGS:** Nothing new, but there will be vague references to past sexual abuse in this chapter, as well as non-graphic and non-related sexual content. If you're playing along at home, you'll see that I've bumped the rating up to M. 
> 
> Many thanks to my beta, Mira.

She has three lanterns, and enough oil to keep them lit during the night. Not all three at the same time—two, at the same time, if she measures it correctly. She's not sure of what this is supposed to mean, or why her candles are rationed as well. Why her existence is measured in book pages read and lanterns lit and hung and candles burned down to the quick, days scratched into her desk and sheets changed, inches grown into her hair.

And shears. He doesn't allow her shears, for her hair. In four years it's grown from just below her waist to just above her knees.

Sansa supposes Petyr fears that she would harm herself. Does he really think himself so important that his sequestering of her, this imposed exile, would be…

She can no longer tell what Petyr thinks, or wants. Besides power. And that he thinks that he may still be able to claim it through her.

Four years in this tower, and the last voice she heard was his. Smug and…

_Oh sweetling. What a mistake you have made. You are only a pawn in this game, and I am the player._

Smug and dominating.

And while these four years in the tower have made her tender-headed, perhaps, and her heart has endured the isolation with a lesser grace. The urgent press of loneliness has wrought strange things from her.

Tossing the rolled up bit of parchment onto her table, Sansa takes the little bread that she saves for her friend, and pushes it through the sliver of broken glass to the raven, who takes it gently into his beak.

 _Come back soon_ , she thinks, losing herself into the bird for a few moments, feeling the creature retreat from itself for a moment. Its mind pushes up against hers, companionable and yielding. Sansa wishes she could find a perch for her friend, but the windows are barred and her tower so high.  _I'll have a letter for you to bring. And more bread, if you'd like_.

Back in the early days, before winter had set in truly, the raven would perch on the bars of her window. How sad she had been in those days; distraught and hopeless. Lonely, too, but for the most part that has stayed. But hopelessness, has not. She is a caged little bird, yes, but she is not trapped. No man, not even Petyr, is strong enough to trap a song. She is smart too, has always been smart, her Septa said, before Joffrey put her head on a pike next to her father's.

Smart, and brave.

Sansa remains in this tower.

Her mind does not.

She remembers, back before her days in the tower.  _So long_.  _So long ago. I was just a child, then. I made the wrong move. But making a move on my own. I am a player in this game_. Petyr taught her cyvasse, forced her to sit in his lap.  _One benefit of the tower_ , she thinks wryly.  _He cannot touch me here. No man can touch me here_.

 _Watch here_ , he had said, voice smug and dominating, the female piece in his hand, her fragile head butted up against his palm.  _The pawn, she can become a queen. She just needs to make it through enemy territory. That's you, sweetling. You made it through the lion's den, and now I will make you a queen_.

Petyr never wanted to make her a queen. Queens rule. Petyr never wanted her to rule.

Sansa wonders (often) what he means to do with her now. Claim the North, she presumes. Marry her himself, perhaps? Or maybe he has no plan. He makes no mention of her in the letters she has her raven pilfer for her, and there is only so much she can discern from his lies to other people. Or from having her raven sit on the sill of his window, closed so often now, to listen to his sweetened bribes and prevaricating tongue.

It had started with a dream, not of the kind that led her to beg her father to allow her betrothal to Joffrey, but an actual… dream.

Inside of the dream, she awoke in a rookery. Or… what used to be the rookery. Even though ashes smoldered and wood crumbled into ash, Sansa could feel stone under her bare feet, a solid perch, the closeness of a wire cage. She could feel nothing but a deep and pervading sadness, before the time sluiced over her frame and she took wing, eyes rooting through the ruins of her childhood home.

All that she ever knew was gone, forever. Her mother and father, her sister, her brothers, her home and hearth. All of her teachers and protectors. All that remained was the cage, but only just so, as she flew over hills and mountains, southwards and beyond.

 _Sansa?_ a voice had called, called her back. It was softer than a whisper but strong, too; the scream of the wind in a blizzard, or a shout, buried by a crack of lightning. Sansa had dipped back down into Winterfell, into the godswood, trying to find her brother, to follow Bran's voice.

She followed a lean grey shape slinking through the trees, until she found herself at the heart tree.

It seemed to sprout from solid rock, and solid as Winterfell had been, was still in her memories, before it had blown out from the flames. Before her it was both fully grown and sapling, shorter than any weirwood Sansa had ever seen, and yet its strong, thick branches reached towards the snow-dampened sky, red leaves shaken by the fierce winds of winter. Hesitant, she flew in wary circles around it, before finding a perch on a steadier branch.

A queer energy pulsed through her.

She abandoned her perch, and settled herself on the ground, ready to yet again take flight.

Red eyes peered down at her—they were hemmed by intensity, but immensely glad to see her. The heart tree, in its impossibly young form, had taken Bran's face. But Bran had never had three eyes…

 _Not before the crow_ , the silent shout, the soft-strong voice, replied.

She had pecked at the bark, peeling it away to reveal wolf and boy and tree, but behind that there was more, earth and blood and charred rock and something more terrible, something like grief and the screams of hundreds, of thousands, of the millennia of the years and the pain yet to come.

 _The most powerful magic can be found with the grief of many_ , Bran told her. Sansa cringed, wings raised open wide.  _And you are one of the many._

 _Death_ , she thought.  _I saw death._

 _Yes,_ Bran replied, and Sansa realized he was in her head. That this was all in her head. And this was all very, very real.  _It is death._

And it was cold.

And suddenly there was nothing, pulled down into the dark reaches of the soil, squirming and desperate under the ground. And then  _she_ was nothing, worms crawling through her pores, rumbling through her finely-ground bones.

 _Don't be afraid. Don't fear the dark. We're safe here_.

"Bran?" she had tried to call, but was nothing.

 _You just have to open your eyes_ , Bran answered, and Sansa had felt something cold drip down her, giving her form again. Her bones reanimated, reassembled, and soon she could do something like breathing, but her body didn't quite fit. She looked down at her paws, the fur red with blood.

But it wasn't just her. There were five others, all spread wide and far. She could feel them, faintly, but her own feeling of loneliness could not be driven away. Lady was dead, Sansa knew. And she was as good as. She knew she could not stay here, in this body, with the dead and the cold. But she runs, to feel the dirt fly under her paws and the trees whipping past her.

She felt complete, if only for a moment.

 _I'm here!_ she wanted to scream, to reach out to them.  _I'm here! Help me, I'm here!_

But no one could hear her.

She would have to save herself.

The only sound to be heard was the soft sound of shifting snow, and Sansa turned to see a pair of yellow eyes.  _Please_ , she thought.

But her bones fell again into dust, and the dream was over. Sansa was once again the raven, in the blackened rookery, in the ruins of girlhood.

She heard Bran once more, softly.

_Out of the greatest suffering comes the greatest power. Walk the path that millions of others have already tread. Walk the path of the infinite._

"Have you, Bran?" she asked.

The coldness returned, and she wanted so dearly to take flight, to flee from it.

 _I will not return_.

And then she woke up.

Sansa does not wonder what the dream means. She knows, from years of reading the books her maid brings her. Her solitary maid, under Petyr's employ, who is to keep her fed and plied with whatever vain trifles she is wanting of to make her days and sleepless nights by quicker. Her maid will not talk to her. Sansa does not if se is mute, or if Petyr has instructed her to remain silent.

So she has books. She has books and she has read them, and she knows from Maesters' studies that she has greendreams, and she knows from Old Nan's stories that she is warging into her friend, the raven, who spent a year perched outside her window before her first dream.

Sansa likes to believe that Bran sent her friend to her. But she knows that she kept the creature there with bread and water and song—and after the dream, she lent herself into her friend's mind, used his beak to peck away at the thinning glass. Just a small hole, enough to pass letters through. Her maid does occasionally come into the room, and Sansa cannot afford to risk her seeing it.

She does not have a wolf.

But she does have a bird.

A little bird…

Sansa rounds her table, clearing away some of her sheaves of parchment (she tries to teach herself Valyrian, pick up where her education had pitifully dropped off) and lights one of her allotted (its almost funny, now) candles.

She spent the day with her friend, swooping around the Gates of the Moon, peeking in on Randa and Mya and her  _dear father_ , before rifling through his desk for the response from Harry's widow. Instead, they were forced to flee to the room when Petyr entered with the Elder Brother. Sansa took them to the first rooms with an open window, a sparsely-decorated sleeping chamber on the ground floor.

"Brother Sandor," the Elder Brother had rumbled. "Thank you for waiting. Let us discuss these matters inside..."

Sansa had caught the smallest glimpse of his face, before turning to fly the raven out of the room and retreating from his mind once more.

She had lain on her bed for hours, wondering what it meant.

The Hound was dead.

 _No matter_ , she thinks, even now.  _No matter. Who was I, to him? Just a silly little talking bird of little consequence._

This letter is her own personal correspondence. Without fail, her friend brings her the letters to the only man who can help her now, the only man who has cause to help her win back Winterfell.

 _Well_ , she thinks.  _I am his brother's wife._   _Not for long, though_ …

Greedily, she tears open the seal on the parchment. Even before Cersei's death, they had corresponded over this great matter, and for some odd reason, he was keen to help her, is still keen to help her. And a knight that he kept in his household, of Tarth, is as well.

"Help, from a Lannister."

 _Lady Stark_ ,

_I apologize for the lack of response to your last letter. As you may surmise, there is much turmoil in King's Landing following my sister's death._

_At this time we are unable to send men into the Vale to provide your rescue, and sending men as far North as Winterfell would only end in death. Instead, I have sent ships and supplies to White Harbor as a sign of goodwill. I know you have signaled that Lord Manderly and his kin would make adequate Lords Protector in your continued absence, and with the death of the Boltons, I will make them so. The Others continue their invasion, and there is not much to be done but to fortify the remaining holdfasts and pray to the gods of all and hope that one may be listening and see fit to keep us fed._

_Still, many have fled to the Vale. I have sent word to Lannister sworn men. There is much to be done, Lady Stark._

_An annulment may be procured for your marriage to my brother in absentia. This much I have been promised by the High Septon, who has become so very understanding as of late. If you believe that remaining a member of my house will be more beneficial to you, you will find a place for yourself in the Red Keep or with your uncle and his wife and daughter in Casterly Rock. If you wish to press suit, however, I will make sure the process follows smoothly._

_The Queen Margaery's womb has quickened, and the Tyrell camp has moved firmly into King's Landing as well. At the same time, Grey Scale has reached… the Reach, as well as the Stormlands, and some reports say as far as the Neck, where I suppose it will meet the cold menace of ours and then we can hope one will annihilate the other._

_No word has been passed from the Wall or Stannis' camp since we last corresponded, meaning that ten months have now passed since we have had word from Castle Black._

_These days are dark, literally and figuratively, my Lady Stark. But I am a Lannister, one of the last, and I will do my best to pay my family's debts to yours._

_Regards,_

_Jaime Lannister_   
_Lord Regent of the Seven Kingdoms_

She carefully rolls up the parchment again. She plans on re-reading it later, but for now her mind is still reeling, and if she is to be dazed and out of sorts, this letter must go away. Far from the snooping eyes of her maid, and from her own.

Is Sandor Clegane alive? And in the Vale?

_And a man of the cloth?_

She is not certain which she finds the most unbelievable.

"I made myself believe that he kissed me, once."

That lie was not one that survived for very long behind the lock of this tower door.

Alone, she has to face the truth or build a façade of lies so deep that she truly surrenders to it. And Sansa has spent so much time as Alayne Stone that she will not give way to any other name, or this perverse form of self-crafted insanity. Of delusion.

She will not become Petyr. Being under his control is more than enough.

And so the kiss died, and she packed it away with Winterfell, the warm smell of Father's leather jerkin, and Mother's soft hands.

"With my tender head… my easy heart… these several years out to sea," Sansa sings, the lyrics coming upon her suddenly. An old, sad, tune. A sailor's song that she had heard while planning her wedding feast. Nothing quite like the songs she enjoyed as a child, but something she can enjoy now, as a woman. "Have made me cold, empty and clear… pour yourself into me…"

Flopping in the most unladylike fashion onto her bed, Sansa stretches out on top of the covers, eyes watching the lantern reflect out into the darkness. Her friend will not return until he's called. Her maid has probably long gone to bed, as have most of the others down at the Gates.  
Grey Scale climbs the coastlines and the Others are invading down from the North. Her family is dead, as are many of her friends. The world is sleeping.

She is alone.

But Sandor Clegane is alive.

 _Once_ , Sansa muses _, I thought that he might have saved me. Once, and then he held a knife to my throat, and scared me so badly. And now, he is a man of the cloth, of all things, if my eyes are true._

She sighs, allowing her eyes to flutter closed. She'll never fall asleep. Not after today.

She allows her mind to stray to a warm bed, in a place unlike here, laden with furs and silken sheets. Her hands moved beneath her voluminous robe, fingers searching out places she had learned years ago. The man at the end of this bed was large, his figure familiar. (She may no longer let herself turn him into the true knight he is not, but she may still use him in her fantasies.) The kiss is not cruel, and her mind devises how the scarred flesh would feel against her lips, his tongue sweeping into her mouth as he crawls over her, her fingers working her wet flesh over and over.

The face is blurry. Today had only given her a glimpse, scarcely a good look at all. Sansa strains to remember the scars of his face, the curve of his nose, but can only gainfully recall his gentle touch, wiping away the blood on her lips, or lifting her atop his horse.

"I'll have a song from you," he rasps, large hands molding to her hips, much more satisfying and attentive than Petyr's could ever be. "Little bird..."

She recalls the firm grips, pinning her to her bed, or his fingers wrapped around her wrist, keeping her from stumbling down the Serpentine. A much...  _firmer... grip. Yes._

She gasps, writhing as her fingers crook deep inside herself.

 _Say my name_ , her second self asks, the heat building.  _Cat_ , she thinks.  _I was always Cat to him. Cat. Alayne._

"Sansa..."

She gasps helplessly, before her body relaxes entirely and she tumbles pleasantly into her dreams.


	5. A Dream of Wolves

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Everyone has dreams. Some mean more than others. But none mean nothing at all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to everyone who commented and left kudos! And a big thanks to [goodqueensansa](goodqueensansa.tumblr.com) for drawing me fanart of Sansa! Which you can see [here](http://media.tumblr.com/5b393fa111e2ffb95720e4df649f52a7/tumblr_inline_mg6nz0mqwf1qe7ksz.jpg).

She dreams of a forest, and a pack of a hundred growling wolves following at her heels. They've turned eastward, following no road of man, just the growing periods of moonlight. She dreams that she is a hulking she-wolf, a stalking grim shadow against the snow-littered ground, grey and huge, immune to the other grey menace slinking through the Riverlands, that has made territory of graves and households whole. Not even the bravest of her grey cousins will feast upon that meat. Not even she.

The wolf has no home she can return to, and she will let no trap or man or snare stop her. Not even the bravest of those who tried, the men who belonged to the woman with the heart of stone. Oh how they tried, and the Lady gave gurgling screeches of protest. But what's a brotherhood of men against a legion of wolves?

They feast on what is left of the aurochs, on whatever is left of any kind. Winter has come, and it has not come kindly.

Arya had not thought it would.

But the coldness came down from the North, from the place that they once called home, and she knew to flee. Even a hulking she-wolf knows when she is outmatched, when it is better to turn her pack to new territory. It is the pack that survives, and the she-wolf would not abandon her pack, not after all this time.

_The lone wolf dies, where the pack survives._

They will survive. The she-wolf has created a pack of her own, and while she may be the strength of the pack, the strength of the pack is what has kept her alive. She has lost her siblings, but she will not lose this pack. She growls, nose low to the ground. Smells the cold, the hard, unnatural cold, which pervades the soil and the air. They must move faster.

She fills the night with her song.

She may not have her home, but her mistress has come back to her. The pack. The pack must survive, and her mistress is the pack. Wolfsisters must find each other. The wolfsisters do not have a home. But they may have each other.

The caw of a raven draws the she-wolf's attention.

She growls, the fur on her back rising. Winter is closing in. Winter, and all that is tied with it—the true winter, cold and dark and long—is rising. With winter, comes the darkness, and what rises with the darkness. She is direwolf, she knows of this darkness. She can smell this cold, this ice. The death, and the perversion of death. It is an instinct much older than her, or her pack, but it is one deeply imprinted on her bones. It has hardened like dragonglass. And it urges her to run, and find the wolfsister.

Grass, covered with snow and ice, comes up beneath her, under her paws.

Winter is no longer coming.

Winter is here.

And Arya—no longer Eirene, or Mollye, or Blind Beth, or No one—sleeps on, the familiar feeling of dirt flying under her paws.

There was a story, Old Nan used to tell them. When they were young and their pack unbroken, when they were all too small and dumb to think of a time where they could be like this. Before winter was hailed by their sorrows and their grief.

 _Oh_ , Arya thinks in her dream, legs thrashing under her covers. _I never stopped being a wolf._

(She sleeps not in the bed of the maid she killed, but in Sandor Clegane's, while he made haste elsewhere. She had been too tired to question, only to ask if he was planning on tying her to it to prevent her escape. He had, in turn, replied there was no longer a ransom on her head to benefit from, before stomping out of the room.)

She runs with her wolfbrothers. East, east. Runs towards her wolfsister, who has lost her pack.

_We are coming. We are coming. You have not lost us. We have always been with you. Oh red wolfsister, hold on. We are your pack. And we are coming for you._

Winter is here.

And so are the wolves.  
  


* * *

  
Sansa rolls over in her bed, pulling her furs tighter. In her dreams, she spreads her wings, looping down through the night sky, perching near to the white specter loping across the ruins. This is the part that is hard, even after years:

Sansa detaches herself from the raven, from her wings and her claws, and stands up. She is not Bran, her sweet little brother. She does not wish to take the form of the heart tree, to walk the path of infinity. She only wishes to stand on her own, on her own trembling, wobbling legs and feet. Her feet are bare on the snow, her long auburn hair only a shade away from what mother's had been, swirling down by her knees.

She imagines it might be easier for her companion, the white specter, who waves and quivers before her, shimmering slightly, and then taking the shape of her bastard brother (something inside her smiles, secretive) Jon. His form is grotesque. But Sansa is now well-versed in the grotesque. The appearance of it no longer bothers her. The disconnect, the true monstrosities in life, belongs to the soul. And she knows, Jon's wounds no longer ail him.

(The first time they had appeared in a dream together, she had cried out, pressed her hands to his throat, his back, and he had called her  _sweet sister_ and eased her away.)

"Daenerys will come for me soon," he says, and she takes his arm. "Have you had a response from Jaime Lannister?"

Sansa nods. They walk the ruins of their old home, in this dreamland controlled by their brother and the pulsing magic of the North. Of the weirwoods and of winter. Snow falls softly, and reality, or a distinct lack thereof, reverberates with every measured step. Cold. It is always so cold, here—perhaps, Sansa thinks, because it is not truly a dream. The three of them are here, and so they have brought winter with them. After all, Stark blood runs through all of their veins.

"He has sent supplies to Lord Manderly. Any more north than that, he fears, and it will only be in vain. And he says he has not heard from the Wall in ten weeks?"

Jon nods as well. "The Dragon Queen's men have made haste. It has saved us all. But Stannis, and his Red Priestess, believe that she is naught but an imposter."

Sansa smiles. "Imposter or not, she has dragons. There is not much to be said when you have been turned to singed flesh and bone."

He snorts. "Still, he says he will refuse to treat with her. And Melisandre is confident that she will… dragons, she says, are the agent of her Red God."

"But these dragons…"

"Are the agents of Daenerys, yes." They turn through the ruins of the rookery, moving through to the crumbled armory, back into the Godswood. "Although Melisandre says that I, too, am an agent of the Red God." He sighs.

Sansa strokes his hand. "Your purpose is your own, Jon. And no one else's. You are here for a reason. You are…"

"I am here because of her." He does not seethe, but his words are tight. Sansa knows his anger is not directed towards herself, but the Red Woman. She cannot fathom the pain of being alive, after tasting death. Is Jon even alive, truly? "She believes me her puppet. Her puppet and the puppet of whatever… fates she finds in her fires."

"But you said that you do not believe she reads them correctly."

Jon sighs, tightening his grip on her. "No."

"You said that if she was reading them correctly, Stannis would have won. And that he would have won a long time ago, before winter took hold of us all."

He opens his mouth as to respond, before shutting it, teeth clicking together. He hesitates. "Yes…"

"The Boltons are dead. Arya is somewhere, out there, alive. Bran is alive… as such. Rickon is… you said last time that Davos is still searching for him. The Northern lords have convened in White Harbor, and while the Wall is… Castle Black still stands, and dragons are coming."

She does not smile—her look is determined. "I am treating with the Lannister host and you with the Targaryens. Stannis Baratheon  _will_ fall. The North will not."

"And you feel no duplicity over duping the Lannisters? With us playing both sides?"

Sansa grins wryly, looking up at him in periphery. "I'm locked away in a tower, how could I possibly do anything at all?"

Jon inclines his head, but his face is still painted with wariness. "Woe betide the man who counts you out, Lady Stark."

"Glad to see that you have accepted that. Although you are no living man, Jon Snow." she answers, voice tinged with a false bravado that Jon can easily read. She wonders why she still bothers, why even after years in the tower she still bothers with masks. "We'll go home, Jon. You will have to rescue me sometime. I would like to hear the voice of someone who is not in my head. We'll go home and then the pack will follow. House Stark began in a winter such as this."

The night becomes alight with the song of hundreds of wolves.

"See," she says, voice and smile tremulous. "They know."

The dream shivers again, as they draw closer to the heart tree. An expression of worry crosses

Jon's face, and he leads her away from it, out of the Godswood, into the courtyard where the archers used to practice.

"They know…" he echoes, a bit dazed.

"What's wrong?" she asks, voice soft. She knows he can see more than she can here. Knows that his form is different, his body unsure. Sansa thinks it might be like the first dream, where she took up Lady's bones.  _Gods_ , she muses, stroking his arm with a ghost-like touch.  _What an existence._

He shakes his head. "I'm not certain. If anything at all. Five years like this, and I'm still not…"

"Soon," Sansa says, trying to console him.

Jon hardens the line of his jaw, before looking to her and nodding sharply. "Soon." And then he grins, cocky and boyish, as Sansa imagines he was back in Winterfell. Oh, how she wishes she had been different. How she wishes they all had been different. "And then we'll get you out of that tower,  _helpless maiden_."

They both laugh, and take another turn around the courtyard.  
  


* * *

  
Sandor does not dream, because he does not sleep. He does not think it wise, this night. Cannot imagine what kind of nightmares sleep would bring him. And so he left the she-wolf to sleep in his own bed of straw and wool, before stalking off for the grounds. For some reason he is drawn not to the sept on the grounds of the Gates, but its heart tree.

All his years on the Quiet Isle have not made him a man of the faith. Any faith, truly, despite the Elder Brother's best attempts to turn him towards the Gods.

(No, he'll pray to the Maiden, even as she lives and breathes.)

He fears how she will react to him. Not for himself—he is a man grown and fought and bled-he can and will take whatever Sansa Stark can do to him, if only because he deserves it. He hopes that she will trust him to lead her out of the Eyrie, to her own safety. He itches to drink, but won't. If he drinks tonight, he will not stop.

Stopping was another one of the Elder Brother's lessons-this lesson, at least, one rooted in pragmatism-one that he can use. One that he should have used, all those years ago at Blackwater. He stopped yes. But Gods, how he terrified her. And now, without the haze of drink, he knows that her fear of him was a healthy, pragmatic one to have.

The she wolf will be there, he thinks. The little bird will have to want to be with her sister. Perhaps he need not approach her, let the she-wolf talk to the little bird. Only the buggering gods will know what she'll be like, four years without contact with the outside world.

He freezes. What if she is not physically strong enough to make it down the mountain?  _Stuck in one fucking room for four years. Any good sense would say her legs have had no exercise, not that she was the hardy sort to begin with._

Stranger. She could ride on Stranger, and he would just have to walk.

 _Not like your leg'll make it_ , a contrary voice hisses in the back of his mind.  _You're weak, old man._

Or Mayhaps he'll just have to steal a horse for the sisters to ride. And furs. Would the little bird have furs in her tower? Would do them no good to get her out and then freeze her pretty little fingers and toes off on the ride down. He scoffs. And what does he know of furs and cloaks? He'd have to ask the she-wolf. She weren't much of a lady, but she did know the ways of one.

 _The little bird has to be… gods what? Ten-and-nine, now? Not so little, anymore._  He pauses, trying to tamp down thoughts of her, womanly and grown, with teats and hips and arse. With real curves and warm, soft skin.  _Stop, you pitiful fuck. She weren't never yours. Or any man's._

He knows that want, wants it for her as well. Sandor Clegane has no lands or wife or family to forsake. He knows why its best to belong to no one.

_You're rescuing her from all of that. Settin' her free from her cage._

_She belongs to no one, least of all you._

Sandor squints into the horizon, the sun beginning to rise over the snow-carved mountainscape.

They say the Eyrie is nigh unreachable in the winter.

He snorts.

Well, he's alive, the she-wolf is alive, the little bird is alive, and the Others are coming. Four things people have said to be nigh impossible. Sandor Clegane is unsure whether he should take so much stock anymore in what people say. Not that he did much, in the first place.

 _Buggering hell_ , he thinks. _I've gone soft. Lame and soft isn't gonna help us any._

He returns to his room, and shakes the she-wolf awake. She gathers her clothes, before staring blankly and telling him to turn around.

"I've got teats now, dumbass," she seethes, crossing her arms over her breasts, clad only in her smallclothes and a threadbare shift.

He shrugs, and does as she says. "If you say so."

"I'm seven-and-ten now, Clegane." He can hear the rustling of cloth as she dresses herself. "Not some flat-chested eleven-year-old, passing herself off as a boy. My apologies."

"You've got hair now, too," he retorts.

He can practically hear her scowl. "I've always had hair, Hound. It's just long, now, like a proper lady."

He laughs, low and deep. "Your sister will be so proud."

The she-wolf doesn't respond, and he can't hear the rustling of fabric, the sound of haphazard dressing. Reluctantly, he turns, the queerest expression on the she-wolf's face as she runs her fingers through her long, brown hair, the heavy wool of her skirt swaying at her ankles.

"I'm not a lady," she answers softly, voice guarded. "Not like she was. Is." She shakes her head, picking up her discarded apron and tying it around her waist. It was stained, and fraying.

"You and I, we've both changed. Not the same people we were, right?"

"Yes," Sandor replies, slowly tasting the word as it leaves his mouth.

She shakes her head, barely taking the time to braid her hair over her shoulder.

"What?"

Her mouth pinches. "He'd better not have taken that from her. Her—her… whatever it was. He just… better not have made her into someone else. He made her play Alayne Stone, the bastard, but he better not have stolen Sansa Stark to put Alayne Stone in her place."

Sandor sizes her up. She looked even more a Stark than she did when she left him on the banks of the Trident. The Elder Brother told him that Littlefinger had the little bird dye her hair brown to play the part of his bastard. He wonders if that would have made the two look more like sisters.

"I thought you were gonna kill him anyway?" he asks.

A smile appears slowly onto her face, as if carved by a knife. "True." She bites her bottom lip. "Still don't want Sansa hurt any more than she already was. I'm willing to do the deed without any more of Littlefinger's..."

He nods. "That I understand."

She stands, putting her hands on her hips. He means to read it as a signal of her being ready for the day.

"We need to see the Elder Brother."

Arya cocks her head. "What for?"

"The truth. About your sister's would-be wedding."


	6. Back to the Beginning

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Arya and Sandor learn about what happened the night of the would-be wedding, Sansa muses on Sandor Clegane and her early days in the tower.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to everyone who has kept reading. And thanks again to my beta, tumblr user wolfheartedqueen, aka Mira.

If the Elder Brother was surprised to have one of the last daughters of House Stark brought in front of him shortly after breakfast, he did not show it. (To his credit, Arya thinks.) Instead, he simply sits behind the table he has requisitioned as his desk, and steeples his fingers beneath his chin.

Arya tries not to bristle when he addresses her as  _my lady_.

"Well then, my lady," he says. "Gods be good. Are you sure that you are up for this kind of journey?"

She tries not to bristle at his assumptions of her…  _capabilities_ , as well.

"Yes, Brother," she answers. "I wish to accompany… Brother Sandor on his…  _quest_  to rescue my sister from the Eyrie. I am most certain it will be arduous, but it is a journey that I wish to undertake."

"Certainly," the Elder Brother replies. Ayra searches his face for any inclination that he is humoring her, or patronizing her. "It is your sister, and you seem to be a most capable young woman, if you've managed on your own all this time. And Brother Sandor has told me of your time… travelling together."

Arya stiffens. _How much has he been told?_   "I… see."

The Elder Brother smiles kindly. "Do not think that you will find judgment here, my child. We all do what we must to survive, and the Gods will forgive us of that. They brought you two here, together, didn't they?"

Arya finds that her jaw is stiff when she tries to answer. "So do you think that this is… our penance? Or something?"

The Elder Brother sifts through sheaves of parchment on his desk, but she thinks it is not in avoidance. "If that is how you wish to look at it, my lady. It's not up to me to interpret the signs the Gods give you. I can only decide what  _my_  life means." He removes a letter hidden between two pieces of thickly-bound vellum, unfolding it. Looking up at her, he smiles again. Kindly.

Some part of his expression, his eyes perhaps—honest, and honorable—remind Arya of her father. She wants to be able to trust him. But she does not know if she can. "Either way, one must remark upon the second chance this meeting has given you."

"Yes," Clegane says, speaking for the first time since awkwardly explaining her presence. Arya wonders just how much he has changed. "And what you spoke of, before we… parted, yesterday?"

"To business. Of course."

Arya looks at Clegane. While the subservience is not new, it's still absurd for her to see him dressed in novice robes. "What business?"

It's the Elder Brother who answers. "I thought it best to find out the most of the circumstances surrounding the Lady Sansa's… captivity, before sending Brother Sandor, and now you, of course, up the Eyrie. Lest you find anything… untoward. It is best that we understand the situation to our fullest extent."

"Littlefinger found out she wasn't a maid and the marriage couldn't go through, so he locked her in the tower and told everyone she killed herself. What else is there to know?" The Elder Brother's smile changes though. Arya purses her lips, fisting her hands into her skirts. "What?"

"We do not know what went on that night. Lord Baelish did not want very many people present for the nuptials…for reasons I have yet to discern. I am not sure if you are aware, but the household of the Eyrie had been here at the Gates for over a year before the wedding was to have taken place. The party that went up for the wedding was very selective, and I am still not sure as to why Lord Baelish wished it to be that way, or why he wished to host the wedding at the Eyrie in winter… I have guesses, of course…"

"But?" Ayra prompts.

"But half of the party that went up to the Eyrie four years ago is dead now, including the intended groom and his Aunt, and those who came down the mountain are, of course, either lying about the events or were not present for your sister's supposed death."

"And who was present and is lying, then?" she demands.

"Lord Baelish, of course. and Lord Corbray, Baelish's bought man, were both in the tower when your lady sister 'jumped.' Along with Corbray's men, they were the only ones in the tower."

"And  _no one_  thought to  _check_ ," Arya seethes, feeling the muscles in her back go rigid. Clegane shifts his weight over by the window. "He what, locked the bloody door behind him and what, everyone just fucking believed him when he said that Sansa killed herself?"

The Elder Brother smile turns facetious. "That was my line of thought, as well."

"So?" she breathes, flicking the word out from between her teeth, from somewhere behind her canines.

"So," he continues. "I had a… friend, look into the departed Lady Waynwood's accounts, and I was given this letter." He references the parchment in his hand at last. "Which details that your sister failed the exam given to her by the Septa. Lady Waynwood was not in the room for the exam, one of her maids rushed to her to inform her. Lady Waynwood, still thinking your sister was the baseborn daughter of Lord Baelish, was then going to renegotiate for a larger dowry, when she heard yelling from Lord Baelish's solar between Baelish himself, and your sister, who had donned her bridal cloak, which was naturally made for a Stark… which was when all the pieces fell into place. Your sister pleaded briefly with Lady Waynwood for help, but she was… confused, obviously, and without all the necessary information and without actual proof that she was, in truth, Sansa Stark. At which point, your sister fled the room and Baelish and Corbray gave chase."

Arya sighs, scrubbing her face with her hands. She closes her eyes and feels the snow beneath her paws, the wind pushing at her fur. "And when they came back, they told Lady Waynwood she had jumped."

"Yes."

"What was the point?" she asks angrily, sinking into the chair in front of the Elder Brother's desk.

"Pardon, my lady?"

She growls. "The point. The point of Littlefucker locking my sister in the tower. The point of… only bringing a few people into the wedding activities. Of having the wedding at the Eyrie. Of everything."

"Only the Gods know for sure what game Lord Baelish is playing, my lady." She looks up, intending to fling another insult at him, before suddenly and without warning, the visage of Sansa rises up in her mind and chastises her for being rude to someone who is trying to do her a service.  _Be a lady._  Seven Hells. She gestures to the Elder Brother to continue, a vague look of what she hopes to be apology on her face. "But I think Lord Baelish keeps her in the tower in the hopes that one day, word of Lord Tyrion's death will trickle in with the ships from Essos, and he will be able to marry your sister himself."

"Why?" she asks, eyes bulging. Clegane swears softly under his breath, and Arya glances at him askance, something like camaraderie building between them. She still has misgivings of him, of course, but with five years between their last meeting and now… She wonders what advice her lady mother would have given. She is a direwolf, yes. She can be a lady, too. It would do Sansa no good to isolate their friends.

"Lord Baelish is a very… twisted man. Very paranoid, now, with the Others coming from the North and greyscale from the south. Very much is outside his control, and it has made him mad," he begins, carefully choosing his words. " _But_ , through your sister, were Lord Robert to… die, Lord Baelish could claim the North. And with your Uncle Edmure and his family under Lannister control, he could also finally lay a full claim to the Riverlands. And with the prosperity he has brought the Vale, and Harry Hardyng's son still in his infancy…"

"And more than half of Westeros will be under his control. If the Others and the greyscale are ever defeated. So he'll rule the ruins of Westeros," Arya finishes, deciding to try to be… measured, perhaps. "But still why, with the wedding…"

"If anyone knows, and will tell the truth of it," Clegane finally chimes in, "it's your sister. And  _she'_ s not talking to anyone unless we get up there to ask her."  
  


* * *

  
It is day again, and so she has only herself to speak to, and only her echo as a reply. Sometimes she imagines a companion for herself, sometimes Jon, or Arya, her mother, or Randa, even Mya or sometimes even some faceless, nameless specter, but for the most part, she doesn't bother with the façade anymore.

(And Sandor Clegane, she adds, silently even within her own mind. You fashioned yourself  
Sandor Clegane a time or two, even after the delusion broke.)

And Cersei, and Joffrey. Petyr. To rail against, when she was angry. (And she was angry. Oh she used to be so very angry.) The maid must think her insane. Sansa wonders if she reports that to Petyr.  _Good, let him think me out of my wits. It can only do me a service._

She wonders what she would say to the real Sandor Clegane, the one down there, right now, at the Gates. He had frightened her so very much in King's Landing, but he had saved her all the same. Not a knight, but more knightly than most of those who had sworn their lives to knighthood. And yet, so very, very angry.

She thinks she might understand, now, the anger. Had she been able to, the first year in the tower she might have drank. More than she did, pouring bottle after bottle of Dornish wines down her throat. Anything to muddle the pain, the shame, the harrowing terror of being trapped here, forever. Until the maid stopped bringing them, and she spent sweaty, shaking days flashing between hot and cold atop her bed. But still so angry. Sansa barely remember tearing the lantern from its post, scattering glass and hot oil to the stone floor. Pitching her belongings at the barred window. Screaming until her voice was gone. Anger, red and hot and mean, yelling herself hoarse at the maid who came and went in silence.

Until the dreams came, as she lay on her bed, out of her mind with sick.

Seven Hells, she had thought she had gone mad.

But Sandor Clegane never had anyone. Not even the dream of an older brother, like Jon. No, he had Gregor, and then the Lannisters, who only built the image of the beast, and pardoned the real monster, painted him as a knight. A paragon of virtue.

 _Still wasn't right to hold a knife to my throat_ , Sansa thinks, wrapping a delicate hand around her neck.  _But I might forgive him for it yet._

She laughs. Not that it means much.

She might as well do what she can, from here.

She briefly wonders what Sandor Clegane would do if she wrote to him, asked him to come rescue her from her tower. But what would she do? Where would she go? She is not safe from Petyr, and they would have to pass through the Gates, and how would they even get down, without Mya and her mules?

It's a niggling thought though. He had once offered to take her away. Promised to never let anyone hurt her.

Sansa laughs again, the hollow space between her shoulders echoing, making her head hurt. She swings her feet out from her bed, weakly rises. Four years in the tower. Not much walking to do, here. Try as she might but…

Her first steps are wobbly. She's not so weak as she cannot stand, or walk, but there is an adjustment in the mornings, or after sitting for a long period of time.

Crossing the room with all the grace of a newborn colt, Sansa clumsily seats herself at her vanity, working her fingers into her recalcitrant calves before flexing them under the tabletop. Routine. Routine is important. Routine is what gets her out of bed, keeps her from pacing her room like a caged animal.

Another laugh.

(The room has wrought strange humors from her, but not madness. Yet. Perhaps Petyr wants her mad, like he did to her Aunt Lysa.)

Next is her hair—a fine horsehair brush with a dollop of lavender oil, her auburn waves detangled gently. Lemon juice and sea salt, on her hands and feet. Citrus and rose water on her face. A dab of perfume behind her ears, on the pulse points of her wrists. And then she stands, jerkily, pulling herself her feet again to cross to her wardrobe, legs less weak but still stiff and graceless.

Sansa dresses herself—grey stockings, white linen shift, blue woolen dress. Her bridal cloak hangs uselessly, as white and perfect as the snow in Winterfell, and as much of a dream of Winterfell. Some mornings she allows her hands to reach out to it, brush the backs of her fingers down the velvet. Of all the things that Petyr had promised her, it was Winterfell that she had wanted the most.

She sighs. And she will have it. But what will be the cost?

Her skin is perfect. Porcelain, alabaster—all the words Petyr had used to describe her were flattering. Her hair is curled, easily tamed. Auburn. Eyes Tully blue. With every passing year, Sansa is surprised with just how much she comes to resemble her mother.

 _Cat_ , Sansa thinks.  _He called me Cat. I wonder how… nicely Petyr would have treated me if I looked more like a Stark, more like Arya. Alayne had brown hair, though..._

She chastises herself, some distant, measured voice in her head rebuking her for nim-gazing.

She is in this tower. These are her circumstances. There is no point in entertaining fantasies.

 _No_ , she thinks suddenly.  _No one has hurt me. No one at all…_

Laughing again, she sits at her desk. The sooner she replies to Jaime, the better.

 _Dear Ser_ , she begins, plucking a weight from one of the open tomes to hold down the long, narrow, piece of parchment.

_I thank you for your continued assistance to the North. I pray that these supplies will see us through while White Harbor builds trade relationships with the East, much as the Vale has done. Any efforts that you as Lord Regent and a Lannister could put forth in the name of the North, a vast member of your realm as I'm sure you remember, to help foster a lucrative and mutually beneficial relationship with the Braavosi merchant fleet would be immensely appreciated. I may not remain a Lannister, but I do know how to pay my debts._

_And as to the issue of my marriage… I fear that an annulment would only prompt Lord Baelish to marry me himself, and I do not wish to be forced into another political marriage. If you are able to secure men willing to bid a clandestine winter trip to the Eyrie, then, of course, the circumstances would change. Even still, it is best that as few people as possible know of my survival. Lord Baelish, I'm afraid, has eyes and ears everywhere in this kingdom, and a company of men leaving towards the Sky Gate would most assuredly raise his attention, and this realm does not have the greatest luck with "hunting" parties._

_Like I said, Ser Jaime, I am comfortable here. As comfortable as possible, and the interests of the North, in the North, are my main concern. Do not worry about my safety while the North starves, while the Others slaughter my people._

_You did not mention Aegon in your last letter. Is he still in the Stormlands with the man claiming to be Jon Connington? Have the Dornish continued to treat with him? Is he a Targaryen pretender, as you have thought?_

_I pray for the Queen's health, and for the life of her child. And for the life of the king._

Sansa hesitates, thinking on Sandor Clegane. He had once been the Lannisters' dog. Surely knowledge of his location could be of use to her. Jaime would have to care…

A strange feeling arises in Sansa, and she shakes her head. No. The Hound is dead. And even so…

No. It would not be right.

Her quill hesitates over the parchment.

But it could be of use to her. And to the North. If she betrayed (would it even be betrayal?) his location to Jaime, it would only further bring Lannister interests into the Vale. Lannister men could bring arms against a deserter, even one who had broken his vows ( _but he made no vows_ , a little voice reminds her) five years ago. Six, if Sansa does the unforgiving math. Jaime would want to collect his debt.

And Sandor Clegane most surely could buy her something for the North. She would have to tell Jaime she was in contact with… someone. The Elder Brother, even, perhaps, to clear up the spectacle of her exam, and he had betrayed the information to her in correspondence.

And yet… Sandor Clegane had stuck out his neck for her, she understands that. Understood it then.

_I could keep you safe._

It just… feels wrong.

And the Lannisters will be ousted from power soon enough.

_Sansa Stark_   
_Lady of Winterfell_

She had touched his cheek. He had been so gentle with her. Never… hardly ever with his words, but he had been… gentle. Had shown the capacity for it, for kindness beyond what the Lannisters might have seen in him. What everyone had seen in him, the Hound. Perhaps the world hadn't tamped all of it out.

Sansa bites down on her lip, staring pointedly at her letter to Jaime Lannister.

Perhaps she has another missive to write.  
  


* * *

  
"And so… Bronze Yohn, is of little assistance," Arya replies. She had handed over the letters she had pilfered from Littlefinger. "I'll put these back. I'll… find another maid, to become."

"You... you were the…" The Elder Brother's eyebrows rise.

Arya smiles smugly. "Maid. In the room, yes, when you met with  _Lord Baelish_  yesterday. It was my... talents that have brought me through this winter, Brother. But yes. So do you believe it was Littlefinger, behind Bronze Yohn's injury? So he couldn't accompany the wedding party up to the Eyrie?"

The Elder Brother considers it. "It's quite possible. To what end, though?" He pauses, eyes scanning the other letters from  _Alayne_  to Littlefinger. "It says here that Lord Nestor Royce was quite disgraced that he was not given an invitation—the Lady Randa had told her. Sansa inquires as to why they slighted Lord Nestor."

"Sweetrobin wasn't going up, either," Arya says. "For the wedding. Because of his health. Sansa writes here, just a week before the wedding that his health had declined significantly."

"That, I can answer," the Elder Brother replies, rubbing his forehead.

"Littlefinger meant to kill the little lord."

The Elder Brother looks to Sandor, whose face has turned to a shade of controlled anger, before nodding wearily. "I believe he meant for Harry to ascend to Lord of the Vale upon his descent from the Eyrie, yes. I believe he wanted… a show."

"How so? And why make the Royces stay behind?"

He coughs, collecting the letters back into a pile before sliding them to Arya. "You remember what order these were in, how they were tied?" She nods. "Lord Baelish is partial to theatrics." It's the the only answer he can give.

For a minute the only sound in the room is the shuffling of paper as Arya collates the letters into their original order.

"So when do we leave?" Clegane asks, at last, hand falling to the hilt of his sword.

Arya looks up expectantly.

The Elder Brother is not surprised at the inquiry. "As soon as possible. Noon, preferably. I've been given supplies from Lord Baelish. He is under the assumption that a contingent of Brothers are heading out to minister to the poor some ten miles West. I am sending a contingent, of course, but you will be going East. Head out with them, and then—"

"Double back around the Gates. Horses?"

"Stranger." The Elder Brother and Clegane share a look that speaks to many discussions over the naming of the destrier. "And the lady may take one of the mares belonging to the Faith. But you will both need mules to make it to the top. The supplies you will need will be marked. I will escort the party to the edge of the village."

"I'll need clothes."

The two men look at her inquiringly, Clegane's lip curling. Arya can see him holding back the quip.

She scoffs. "I'm not climbing any mountains or riding any horses in this skirt. I'll need  _leathers_. And you know, riding boots?"

"Right, will you need—"

"Assistance? No. Just time."

The Elder Brother nods. "Right. Well then. Noon?"

"It'll be best for us not to be in each other's company until then," Clegane rasps, mostly to Arya. She nods. She turns to leave. "And girl?" She pauses. "You'd best not look like a girl when I see you next."

Growling, Arya stalks out of the room.

"Shut up,  _Brother_."


	7. The Journey Begins

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Arya and Sandor leave the Gates, Sansa writes a letter to a man long-thought dead.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **A/N:** Sorry this chapter took so long! I wound up having to drop a class and try and scramble for another one, and that scramble has now landed me in three 400 level classes... and the heat in my dorm broke, so settling in wasn't quite as easy as I would have liked, and I didn't get nearly as much done last week as I would have liked. I hope all of you guys who are just starting spring semester got your semesters off to a good start! Thanks as usual to my beta, Mira. 
> 
> **Trigger Warnings:** This chapter will reference past instances of sexual abuse. Non-explicit, but there.

When the party prepares to leave shortly after the sun reaches its zenith, Arya's hair is tucked up under a plain woolen cap, and the two are hidden away from the rest of the party and the nosy stable boys, outside an ice-crumbled section of the stable eagerly waiting to be rebuilt.

After stuntedly mounting Stranger, Sandor looks her up and down, nodding approvingly.

"Good," he says, after appraising her new attire: suede leggings, stiff leather boots, lined leather gloves, a muddied wool tunic, jerkin and cloak. Her chest had flattened, if not because of the thickness of her clothing, then because of some sort of binding. "Do I want to know where you got them, wolf brat?"

She snorts, shaking her head slightly before moving to load her supplies into her saddlebag.

Her tone, upon answering, is decidedly ambiguous. "Fucked a man and stole his clothes."

He looks at her like he doesn't know whether to believe her or not, before tilting his head, appreciative. "I can admire the cleverness in it. Leave him your skirts, then, did you?"

"His choices will be to walk back to his rooms arse naked or in my dress," she responds, saddling her own mount. "Serves him right for assuming I was a whore."

Sandor barks a laugh. "Took his coin, then? Or were his pants enough payment?"

Arya shakes her head, a small smile blooming on her lips. "My cunt for these tatters? Of course I took his coin."

"Was he a farmer?" Sandor asks with a laugh. If it's a game, he'll play it willingly. And if she really fucked a man into sleep to steal his clothes, then all the better for her and all the worse for the sap who propositioned a she wolf. "Or something higher? The innkeeper?"

"I would hope the innkeeper would have better clothes than these."

He continues as if he hasn't heard her. "He'd be a bigger man, though, than what would fit you. Mayhaps one of the innkeeper's lesser sons, then."

"Lesser? Would I accept lesser?" She would have, of course, and had. But this stupid, and frankly risky, conversation is the most fun she's almost had in years. "Do you know who my father was,  _Brother_  Sandor?"

"Well that depends on who you are, doesn't it?" he replies. "And who are you this time, little girl?"

Arya scoffs. "Little?"

He snorts. "You haven't gotten much taller, have you?"

She mounts the mare aptly and with flourish, raising an eyebrow in his direction, a flagrant challenge to his injured leg.

"I could still kick your skinny little ass," he growls.

"I'll run away."

He barks a laugh, before shaking his head again. "So what in Seven Hells are you supposed to be? You're dressed a bit smart to be some lowly stable boy?"

"Of course not."

Sandor pulls his hood up tighter as they ride away from the shadows of the stable. "Then what the hell are you, boy?"

"One of the innkeeper's lesser sons, of course. Thinking about joining the faith, and all." She briefly considers riding her mount closer to his, but decides to stay out of hitting distance.

 _Although_ , she wonders,  _his leg may keep him from trying it. Although, if his leg's in that sorry shape, we're pretty fucking screwed._  What an  _adventure_ … they're embarking on. "Don't know though, I'm pretty fond of my whoring."

"For such a small bugger?" She almost feels like laughing, and wonders if the process would bring up years of dust and neglect. A fleeting look of—something almost like happiness, yes, because they are  _almost_ , and never quite there, not anymore, not after.

"Why do you think my fa—"

She quiets quickly, the moment of laughter gone before it had the chance to come to fruition.

Hastily she tucks her face away into the shadows. She did not take a face to steal this time—again, for some reason, Sansa's consciousness had taken form in her mind, chiding her for the bloody thought. No, Sansa had been merciful. She will take care to practice her sister's mercy until she finds her again. Until she is free again.

Littlefucker rides past on his great steed, conducting a discussion of great import with the Elder Brother.

Arya casts her eyes back to Sandor, finding a similar posture on him as well. He gestures for continue.

"Do you think he—" she begins to ask, sidling up next to him.

"Stop talking," he hisses, looking very nearly to pushing her away from him. "And go away."

"The Elder Brother did say there were other—"

" _Buggering hells_ ," he hisses, pulling on Stranger's reigns to separate them. "Didn't you survive six years on your own?  _Stop talking_."

 _I'm going to kill you_ , she thinks, bringing her horse up behind Littlefinger, casting her head just so.  _I was going to do it for pushing her off the tower. Now I'm going to do it for keeping her there._  She thinks it may almost be worse than causing her death. No, she knows that death is a gift. It is a mercy. One, she remembers, a small twinge rising up in her chest but petulantly refusing to spark into remorse, that she refused Clegane.

Littlefinger has never shown anyone mercy.

Arya fears what they might find up in the tower. She knows madness. She has seen it. She has almost lived it. She has rid the world of it, mercy by mercy, gift by gift. She saw Cersei Lannister die.

What has four years on her own done to her sister?

No matter the answer to that question, Arya resolves to love her and protect her. There is goodness in Sansa that only perished in Cersei Lannister.

The wind shifts, and Arya stops thinking. Instead, she listens.

"I will bring back the herbs we need for Lord Robert. I have been assured that they are available in the village, my lord," the Elder Brother says. "I am most honored that you have chosen to escort me and my humble brothers outside the Gates, my lord."

Arya sees the corner of a smile appear on Littlefinger's face. "I am most thankful for all that you have done for the boy, Brother. Now, you are certain that this trader is trustworthy? It would be… most unfortunate to be maligned by a liar or a thiever."

Something roots in the Elder Brother's expression, the line of his mouth tightening. "I can see no reason why the trader would risk harm to his liege lord."

"Ah…" Littlefucker's smile grows wry. Arya thinks that this must have been the expression on his face when he closed the door on her sister. "But Lord Robert is not his liege. You said the man is from the West."

"Still," the Elder Brother answers, frowning. "I see no reason why the trader would harm the lord of his sanctuary. It would seem unwise, when there is very little elsewhere to run."

"Well then," Littlefinger says smoothly. "I trust that nothing will go wrong with Lord Robert's new treatment. It would be most unfortunate."

"Yes…" the Elder Brother replies slowly. "Immensely unfortunate. The poor boy has been through enough, I would say."

Arya is forced to drop back as the party bottlenecks, reaching the edge of the village. Carefully, she worms her way closer again.

"So ten days?" Littlefucker asks. "And you're certain the supplies are adequate?"

The Elder Brother nods. "My brothers are men of the cloth. They do not require much in the way of material belongings. Merely enough to survive and minister to those who cannot survive without the mercy of great lords such as yourself, my lord."

 _I'll show you mercy_ , Arya thinks. There's a knife in her boot. She knows how to use it. A blade crosses the neck of a great lord just as easily as it does the small man's.

"I am to be a good and merciful lord, Brother," Littlefinger answers. Not quickly, not with haste. He is too good for urgency. "I will always answer the call of the people."

"And you have, my lord." Arya grates her teeth. "Look how the Vale prospers, even in this time of great hardship."

Littlefinger's death will be her gift to herself.

(And Sansa. Definitely Sansa.)

They reach the Gates, and pass through them. Arya pulls her cloak tighter around her. They'll have to ride on with a party for a while yet, with Littlefinger's men likely watching them. And then before dark, they'll turn around and make for the village again and start the ride up to the Eyrie.  
  


* * *

   
  
She feels like singing. Dancing. She enjoyed it, once, before she had to worry about groping hands and cloying breath.

She remembers Sandor Clegane's knife to her throat, her voice shaking as she sang for mercy. For him, for her. For them all, as green flames danced through the startled sky.

Should she trust him?

She did not know what he was offering, at the moment when the offer was made. Drunk, and terrifying…even if she hadn't been so confused, would she have taken him up? It had looked like Stannis was sure to win, and Sandor Clegane had turned craven…

 _He must be better, now. Gentled_. She knows of the Quiet Isle.  _And even before… he saved my life. It was all he could do, under Joffrey's watch. And whatever else… only when he was drunk. Because he had to be drunk._

The Lannisters never would have allowed his mercies otherwise. And so with his savings came his abuses. Sansa is not sure if she can yet forgive him for those abuses, but knowledge of his pains, his entrapment… she might understand them.

_He is no longer the Lannister's dog._

But can she trust him?

Her survival is her upperhand. Her raven, her powers. Petyr thinks her trapped.

 _Would it be smart, to be rescued?_   _Sandor Clegane is a fierce warrior, he could..._

She has very few friends in the Vale, and none that know of her status. But still, she does not know when Petyr will act next, or what that act will be. Is it worth the risk? She knows, from Petyr, that he is not the Mad Dog of the Saltpans any more than she is the Lady of Lannister. That he "died" on the banks of the Trident.

Even if she did not wish for rescue, it would be nice… to have a friend. With Jaime, she negotiates. With Jon, she plans. With Sandor… she could write. Be a woman. Have a friend. He never held aspersions to the stature of her birth, either… at least, when he wasn't mocking them. And she isn't a silly little bird, anymore. No more than he is the Hound.

What would she write, though?

_Sandor Clegane, I am writing to inform you that I am, in fact, not dead. It is my greatest wish that you finally make good on your drunken and slovenly offer to keep me safe._

"No."

It had been so easy to write to Jaime Lannister. (Truth be told, she had felt very little for Jaime Lannister. Sandor Clegane, on the other hand…)

Seven hells, to think that she had dreamt she kissed the man because he was the only one to try and step in and save her. How low had her standards been forced to go, with all traces of Sansa Stark gone and Petyr's minty breath and wandering hands at every private moment, every darkened corner of shared secrecy. Her innocence had been the price for his favor.

With Sandor, her innocence had never been a price…

But it seemed only after it was gone that he tried to protect it.

Sansa gives a short laugh.  _Well, it's all gone now. Not a drop left._

Perhaps he could take her case to the Elder Brother, even if he didn't wish to rescue her himself.

Or perhaps… there is no good way for her to rationalize it. Petyr Baelish is doomed to dream of her mother. Of a maid long gone. Of Catelyn Tully. But Sandor Clegane… he was a boy, then a boy gone and twisted, and now a man just begun.

 _The truth_ , she thinks.  _You know the truth of him. Because he has always told the truth to you. A hound will die for you, but never lie to you._   _I am not Petyr._

She picks up her quill.

_You only spent the entire morning worrying over this, and you'd worry the day away if you allowed yourself. Girl, don't become indecisive now._

Although, being decisive is what got her into this tower.

_Do not blame yourself for that._

She has every right to be decisive.

"Gods," she mutters, voice tinging with the barest hint of a fond laugh. "I can't even start it  _Dear Ser_. He'd never read it. He'd just chuck it into the fire."

She flattens out the parchment under the pads of her fingers.

_Sandor Clegane—_

Now what? He doesn't appreciate formality, so she cannot fall back upon that guise.

_I am unsure as to how to write this letter. To start it. To even address it—because neither of us is supposed to have survived. That's the trick of it, I suppose. We're both victims, you and I. The world would be aghast to know that it's let us live._

_This is_  (her hand hesitates, ink dripping from the quill, blotting the paper. For some reason, Sansa tenses at the slight imperfection. The mess. She can barely move her neck, her shoulders.)  _Sansa Stark. And I am alive. And I am in the Eyrie. And I know that you are lodged at the Gates of the Moon, with a company of men of the faith from the Quiet Isle. I cannot properly explain how I know this—I fear you would scoff and call me a silly and rather delusional little bird who has spent too much time on her own._

_You once offered to take me with you, at a time when the world burned and we were two very different people, or so I would hope. I have prayed for you, that you have become gentler and kinder, a better and healthier man, if only for your own sake. I pray that to hold true, and that your time on the Quiet Isle has served you well._

_There is a story that the smallfolk tell, about the night I supposedly flung myself from the tower. And subsequently, about the light that can be seen shining from it. (And no, I will not yet tell you how I know that, as well.) I think that, if you have spent any time in an inn at night, you will have heard the story of my… fall from grace. The truth of the mettle of the story is inconsequential—but the fact of it is that I have never left this tower._

_And now, Sandor Clegane. I beseech you—whatever compelled you that night to come to my room, may you find it within yourself now._

_You once said that you dreamed of being a knight. You may still not be that, or never be that. But I hope that you could be true, for I am once again in need of being rescued._

_Enclosed is a lock of my hair, to fulfill the burden of proof of the honesty of this document._

_Regards,_

_Sansa Stark_   
_Lady of Winterfell_

She freezes after signing the missive with her signature flourish. Her hand begins to shake.

"I have nothing to cut my hair with," she says. "How could I have…"

 _Stupid_ , she thinks.

"But…"

She sighs, moving to seat herself in front of her vanity.  _Perhaps I could break the mirror? But the maid could see, and that is too much of a risk. Even more of a risk than this… letter. No, I'll have to…_

Carefully, she parts her hair, reaching for the bottom of it, where the maid could not see, and begins to pluck out strand after strand. Brushing her mind against the raven's, she brings her friend to her room if only to keep herself outside of her body and away from the sting, until her hand is filled with a hock of long, auburn hair thick enough to prove her word. She folds it lengthwise three times, and tucks into the crease of the parchment, and seals it.

After fastening it to her friend's leg, she flies with him down the mountain to take him to the room that must be his.  
  


* * *

  
They double back at nearly sunset, and whatever feelings of camaraderie felt in that moment have been replaced by Arya's doubt.

Why should she trust him?

_And the little bird, your pretty sister, I stood there in my white cloak and let them beat her. I took the bloody song, she never gave it. I meant to take her too. I should have. I should have fucked her bloody and ripped her heart out before leaving her for that dwarf._

But he had been dying, had been sobbing. Had been trying to edge her into giving him mercy, even as she was loathe to give it. So he wanted her anger.

But still, even a dying man's words are rooted in truth.

_What is the truth of his, then?_

They ride silently on, through the village, their costumes changed and faces concealed. The Gates are open, as the Elder Brother had planned.

_I'll have it from him. I won't let Sansa be around him if he meant what he said. I'll protect her from even him, if I have to._

God, what dark days they were, with even dark yet to come. Should she have stayed with him? Waited and been found by the Elder Brother? What fate would have been hers? His?

The gate squeals as it opens. Fearlessly, and without looking back, they pass through.

And so they begin their journey on the road to the Eyrie.

Unaware that they are being watched.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Reviews are very much appreciated. But if you've read to the bottom, that's appreciated as well!


	8. What Dreams May Come

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Stark siblings dream of each other and their wolves; it is a night of ice and fire in everyone's veins.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Sorry this update has taken so long! I'm trying to get back into the swing of things and the past week was the first real week of schoolwork and Student Assembly work and I allowed myself to get inundated. Apologies! 
> 
> Thanks to Caroh99, swoon, wolfheartedgirl and headtrip for your lovely comments! Hope all is going well with all of you, dear readers!

Her dreams are pleasant, and not of Jon. Her day spent in uneasy anticipation, she slipped easily into sleep when the time came. She had flown her friend down to the room she was near certain Sandor kept, and stayed for quite some time before leaving, but he had never appeared.  
  
She supposed it was quite unfair of her to presume that he did not have tasks to keep his attentions during the day. She knows very little of his life at the moment.  
  
She strolls through the grounds of Winterfell, and they are whole and lush and green. It is hope that makes the blossom open in the palm of her hand, birds chasing along gusts of warm air.

It, like all things good in her life, even in her dreams, does not last.  
  
Storm clouds appear over ahead, her summer silks crumbling away to starched linen, stiff wool.  
  
“Bran,” she sighs, pushing her hair back from her forehead. “Bran? Must you?”  
  
Snow swirls up from the ground, feathering the stone, hollowing it out once more. It must always be winter, when he brings her here. When she comes here, on her own, it is only the place of her childhood, the hope of love and…  
  
“Where is Jon, Bran?” she asks, stalking towards the godswood. “Why isn’t he here?”  
  
“Jon isn’t sleeping tonight,” the soft-strong voice she knows to be Bran answers.

Sansa pauses. “Why not?”  
  
Snow builds up around her, carrying her towards the heart tree. She breathes in, breathes out, trying to smooth away her annoyance, as the wind blows away her sight, the ice stinging her cheeks, even in the dream. It’s Bran who controls it, now. Her dreams are pleasant, and light.  
  
Nothing and no one can reach her in her dreams.  
  
But he—he always insists on bringing pain, the sharp prick of reality, into his.  
  
“ _Bran_.”  
  
He is not the little boy they once knew.  
  
(Of course, she is not the sweet, gentle, trusting eleven-year-old, either.)  
  
“Bran!” she shouts, throwing her shoulders back, her head straight.  
  
The dream is filled with the sound of childish, boyish, laughter. Sansa relaxes her shoulders, and the ice recedes.  
  
But by the gods, what has happened to her little brother in these seven years past?  
  
( _What has happened to you?_ a kniving voice whispers, fingers running down her spine, her front. Through and over her flesh, and she is petrified like the white weirwood before her. _Stop_ , she thinks, the darkness pricking at the corners of her vision. _Stop this, now_.)  
  
It squeezes over her heart, a cold fist in her chest, before it breaks.  
  
And she is warm again.  
  
“Sansa,” the tree says with Bran’s face. “Good news.”  
  
“Yes, Bran?” Sansa says, voice terse. Almost maternal, almost like mother chiding him for muddying his clothes or climbing up the wall, before—  
  
A shadow with silver armor, the Hound’s helm, casts over them both.  
  
“He is not the Hound anymore, Bran.” She takes another breath (she can breathe here, out in the open, and not even Bran and his cold powers can take that away from her), clasping her hands at her waist. “The Hound is dead.”  
  
“You sent him a letter,” he replies. The tree… vibrates before her, becoming more like a boy, curious. Unknowing of the workings of… Sansa blushes, remembering how she used his memory the other night, her fingers working furiously between her legs.  
  
She shakes her head.  
  
“You didn’t?” He sounds so much like a boy that it pains her chest. “But I saw, I did see, Sansa—”  
  
“No, no,” she titters. “I did. I wrote him.”  
  
“I didn’t read it,” he says urgently, so earnestly. And the tree shifts before her, and Sansa’s eyes widen at this sudden transformation. “I swear.”  
  
“I believe you, dear brother,” she answers lowly. “I do.”  
  
“I scared you.”  
  
“I…” She shakes her head, as if clearing it. She does not know what to tell him, how to read him. Is he the darkness or is the darkness driving him? How can she help him? “Do not worry about it. It is of no matter.”  
  
She sighs again, fingers working into the smooth, pliable skin of her knuckles.  
  
“You did not tell Jon you were going to write him.” The voice is hesitant, less strong. Quieter. “I did not mean to—”  
  
“I do not have to tell Jon of my every movement, Bran,” she explains kindly. _Please_ , she thinks. _Whatever this is, let it bring my brother back to me. Whatever is making him into a boy again, please let it stay._ “I am a woman grown. I make my own decisions.”  
  
“But father, and mother…”  
  
Sansa opens her mouth to speak, but reconsiders. Dropping to her knees, she spreads her skirts out around her, tentatively bringing her fingers to stroke the tree’s face.  
  
“Father and Mother made terrible mistakes, Bran. They loved each other, they did. And they loved us, most of all. So did Robb… and Jon and I try not to repeat those mistakes. We allow each other to make our own choices.”  
  
He is so cold. The ice burns her fingers to touch, but her hands do not falter. She will claim Bran back, if only his heart. She must not fear him, not if she and Jon are so close to reclaiming the North.  
  
Bran is a Stark of Winterfell.  
  
Even if he does not wish to return.  
  
“They tell a story about you,” the voice, no longer harsh and strong, but sweet and child-like, whispers.  
  
“Is it a good one?” Sansa asks, tears welling in her eyes.  
  
“No.”  
  
The tree melts away, revealing the boy underneath. Sansa brings him into her arms, shaking with the effort not to weep.  
  
“I’ll have to do something, then. To make them tell a better one.”  
  
“You’re the Maiden in the Tower,” Bran whispers into her shoulder. “It could be a good story, if nicer people told it. Some of them tell it nicely. Some of them don’t. But they should be nicest about you, Sansa. You should be like Jenny of Oldstones, or Good Queen Alysanne. You could be the Lady of Winterfell. The kind, beautiful, keeper of the North.”  
  
Sansa laughs, the sound like a tinkling bell. “We’ll leave the titles to the bards.”  
  
Bran purses his lips. “It’s good, that you sent him the letter.”  
  
She laughs, almost nervously. The hairs on the back of her neck raise—and the coldness seeps back in. The darkness, the kniving voices.  
  
“Bran?”  
  
“It’s good,” he says with a nod. Sansa frames his face with her hands. He smiles. “It is.”  
  
“Don’t go, Bran.” She says, trying to be commanding, trying to be stern. But he turns colder and colder under her palms, burning her again—yet she holds on. No, she thinks. “Bran, stay here. With me.”  
  
He smiles, face serene. “I’m always with you.”  
  
“Bran,” she shouts, and his face turns white, fissures and cracks appearing like ice on his face. “Bran, tell me about Jon. Why isn’t Jon here? Bran? _Bran_!”  
  
“Dragons,” he whispers dreamily.  
  
Fire erupts from within him, red and yellow and flame bursting out from the fissures and cracks and Sansa is knocked onto her back, and the flames twist and slither around her like snakes, building and building and she realizes she is in her tower, but not her tower and it is—the sky, startled and broken, is now a shade of green she’ll never forget, doesn’t, cannot bear to remember.  
  
The silver shadow of armor, the Hound’s helm, and she is on her back in her old bed.

Gasping, Sansa lifts herself up onto her elbows.  
  
“Please,” she whispers, reaching out to the shadow as it moves over her. “Please, Sandor.”  
  
The helm is removed, and he comes to life before her, climbing atop her in her bed, weapons and burdens cast aside. The armor drops with heat, silver like moonlight pooling at the feet of the bed, and they swim in the debris of war--swords, helms, battles all pooling at her feet as he lays her back onto the bed, as her hands urge him closer, closer.  
  
“Little bird,” he rasps, and she ties her hair ribbon around his vambrace. The metal melts like ice under her hands, under the fire, and soon his form melts into her dress, now only a simple linen shift. The meat of his hands trace under the billowing hem, fingers molding into her thigh. The fire builds, outside and in, his skin so hot on hers, sweat dewing in the valley of her breasts.  
  
“Sansa,” she corrects him on gasp, directing his hands higher, higher, making her hotter, hotter.  
  
His face creases in concentration, the weight of his hips in the cradle of her thighs, and she reaches up to stroke his face. _Fire on fire_ , Sansa thinks. _Make me hotter. Take me away from this place, let me burn hotter, let me burn brighter._  
  
It is the winter of change, for one and all, and for them. Their hips meet and spark, and the palms of his hands wring gold against her heated flesh. It is so cold in her tower, so lonely. She misses touch, she thinks, most of all, writhing against him, under him, up to him.  
  
They will set the building aflame.  
  
“Sansa,” he murmurs in her ear, letting her stroke her hands over him, letting her hands learn his face, his scars. “Sansa.”  
  
“Let me show you,” she cries, bringing him to the blemish at her chest, the hollow ring to her smile, that black spot on her tongue. “Please, let me show you. I need to show someone, anyone. Please, let it be you.”  
  
He kisses it away.  
  
“I’ll wait,” he tells her.  
  
She cries out again. “I waited too. I’ve waited.”  
  
For what, she does not know. But the waiting, the pain and the longing, is what she knows.  
  
“We left,” she cries, louder. “We’re not,” she sobs, shaking her head, his hips pistoning her out of her wits. “We’re not.”  
  
Sandor nods, and kisses it away. He lowers his mouth down to her ear, sucking the lobe between his scarred lips, the pleasure fire and divine, his skin pressing on hers whisking every memory of the cold away.  
  
He pushes her higher, her hair catching fire, the rope of auburn hair exploding into flames around them.  
  
“Let down your hair,” he whimpers.  
  
He removes his face from her neck.  
  
“You could keep me safe,” she whispers, before it engulfs them both.  
  
The screech of ravens bursts through her mind, wrapping around her thin frame, carrying her far, far away. The kniving voice grows louder, its cold fingers wringing through her, turning her blood to ice. Sansa takes flight, fighting to get away from it as it chases her from the fire of her dreams.  
  
 _Wake up_ , a voice screams through the dark wings. _Wake up! Wake up now!_ Sansa breaks into consciousness, fights her way into it, gasping and sweating under her soft sheets, her warm furs. _Wake up_ , the voice echoes, in time with the throbbing between her legs. _Wake up._  
  
“Dark wings,” she says, rubbing at her flushed face. “Dark wings, dark words. Now what?”  
  
She swings her feet out onto the cold stone floor. Her legs nearly give way as she scrambles to her feet, anger rising in the muscles of her back, the rigidity of her neck.  
  
“Now what?” she demands of the darkness, swaying on her unsteady feet.  
  
 _Dark wings, dark words_ , the dream voice chants in her mind, making her less angry, more… unsettled. The darkness closes in around her, and Sansa hastily carries herself to her desk, sleep-deadened fingers bringing the last of the oil in her lamp alive.  
  
And then, a familiar sound.  
  
She thinks it a reply from Sandor, perhaps. A midnight confidence after his duties over. But the raven is not her own, not her friend’s, and Sansa thinks she sees the glint of the third… the third eye as she hesitantly unwinds the parchment from the bird’s leg.  
  
 _Jaime?_ she thinks. _But I have not…_  
  
Her friend is smart, of course, and because of their relationship is able to go between many places and her tower (the first years were heady, as they fought through snow and winds to get to each place, sharing her friend’s mind and learning routes, but now he can do this tower, and the Red Keep, and Castle Black without mind and only with her urging.) But this bird…  
  
The third eye.  
  
But why then, did Jaime…?  
  
Fingers hastily peeling open the seal, Sansa brings the parchment close to the light.  
  
 _My lady—_

The parchment quivers under the unsteady light, and Sansa realizes her hands are shaking, that she is cold, so cold, and it knives through her senses.  
  
She presses her eyes closed.  
  
 _Breathe_ , she thinks.  
  
Her eyes open, and she continues, the pulsating nerves twitching in her hands.  
  
 _I write with utmost haste, and with the hope that this raven, the Keep’s smartest, will find you. I fear I have not been honest with you, Lady Stark._  
  
 _My departed sister knew of your survival, if only for the shortest time before her demise. Of this I knew. I wished to protect you from this, to protect her from this. But her plans regarding you, I have now learned, came to some fruition._  
  
 _In that time, she sent a contingent of men, including her champion Ser Robert Strong, to find you in the Vale, and bring back your head for her personal collection. I have only just received this information._  
  
 _Ser Robert Strong, as many believe, is naught but Ser Gregor Clegane, risen again by dark magic. He is undefeated, my lady. And he is coming for you. I fear he may already be in the Vale by the time this letter reaches you._  
  
 _I will write more when I am able to contact the Lannister men in the Vale. We will provide for your safety._  
  
 _Best,_  
 _Jaime Lannister_  
 _Regent of the Seven Realms  
  
_

* * *

  
Arya stirs in her sleep, rolling over to find Clegane rustling in his bedroll. He mutters something unintelligible, burrowing his face into the ground. He moans roughly, curling up on his belly. She rolls her eyes.  
  
The fire crackles warmly at her back, fighting away the chill. They’ve found shelter in a cave half a day’s journey from the Gates of the Moon, concealed behind a copse of thick-trunked trees.  
  
She rolls over, easily sliding back into sleep.  
  
Her paws slide through the snow, and it flies back against her haunches, hackles raising as ravens swarm above her, cawing loudly as they, too, flee.  
  
She leads her pack of small cousins through the tops of the Mountains, over the grey rock and harsh lands. They flee the cold, the deadened cold that has chased them through rivers and flatlands, and now to the cusp of the mountains.  
  
Howling at the moon in the clear-cold night, she knows. Not even a direwolf can survive this cold. They must move, and keep moving. They will not stop, they will not rest.  
  
Her cousins join in the song, and Arya’s mouth fills with blood, jaws snapping. They attack the red men, breaking them between their jaws. Arya moves away. No, she thinks, slipping away from Nymeria’s mind.  
  
Lowering her nose to the ground, she sniffs along the ground.  
  
There is a trail, to the wolfsister. She will find it. Not too long, she thinks, under the ice and snow. She is a wolf, and the strength of the wolf is the pack. And the strength of the direwolf, is the winter, and it is come.  
  
Arya tumbles out of the dream, squirming in her blankets.  
  
Her eyes slit open--Clegane is motionless in his spot, and Arya cannot chase the feeling that they are being followed. _But he’d know, right?_ she wonders.  
  
 _No_ , she thinks. _He’s just a hound. He’s no wolf._  
  
Clinging to the feeling of the ground passing swiftly under her paws for just a moment longer, Arya hunkers down into the ground, feeling the last vestiges of Nymeria, of the pack.  
  
 _They’re coming_ , she thinks. _She’s coming and I’m going to find Sansa. We’ll be a real pack again._  
  
But still...  
  
Dogs and wolves are cousins.  
  
She rolls over, looks at Sandor Clegane in the damp, blue-filtered dawn.  
  
No. Not yet.  
  
Something still and tense climbs into the space between her breasts, and takes root. Fingers curling into the rough wool, she stretches from her head to her toes, the still tenseness mounting her limbs.  
  
She cannot trust him yet. Not with the pack, and not with Sansa.  
  


* * *

  
Sansa pants in the early dawn light, one hand fixed over her chest. It hurts, gods it hurts, and she struggles to breathe.   
  
 _Breathe_ , she thinks. _Breathe._  
  
“Jon,” she gasps.  
  
 _No, Jon cannot help me._  
  
“Dragons?” She licks at her lips, feet moving into motion. _Hide the letter. The maid will wake soon, hide the letter and turn off the lantern._  
  
“Can he make it up the Gates? How will...?” Blankly, she walks to her wardrobe, and opens the heavy wooden doors. “Cersei? How did Cersei know? And Sandor’s... Sandor’s brother?”  
  
She feels small again, in King’s Landing, as all the pieces on the game board moved around her and she did not know how or where they would land or what they knew and what she didn’t know and...  
  
“I tried to... but Jon and I... and with Jaime, but...”  
  
 _Oh Gods._  
  
The velvet cloak is before her, emblazoned with a snarling wolf, dripping with pearls. Her gift, from Petyr. He did not make her a Stark.  
  
But she... she _could_...  
  
“I am Sansa Stark,” she says, weighing the words on her tongue as the morning breaks.


	9. Dark Wings, Dark Words

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sansa makes a decision to reach out to someone, whiel Ayra and Sandor face their inner darkness in the morning light.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **A/N:** So here is chapter eight, finally, after promising to try to update at least once a week. But, it's midterm season so I've been a little crunched on time and creative energy, so I wrote Sansa's scene and then the second bit of emotional pain sat in google docs for over a week while I steadily ignored it. (Or rather, chose not to use it as my preferred method of procrastination. Gah. So here I am, midterms finished, and a few shots into a new bottle of peppermint schapps... my beta was sober though, I promise. ;)
> 
> Additionally, I have a new one-shot, Weight in Gold, if you want to check that out, from the SanSan Secret Valentine fic exchange on the tumblr. And big thanks to my pinch-hit beta, tumblr user Emily. 
> 
> And thanks to my reviewers from the last chapter, **merrymagicalbroad, swoon, Caroh99** , and **Phoenix-Rising**.

Her maid has come and gone, and Sansa curses herself, thinking of the thousands of people of the Vale standing between herself and Ser Robert Strong. Thinking on the tales of devastations, the horrors Ser Gregor Clegane wreaked on the Riverlands while he was alive. A dead man would have no mercy... not that Sansa thought that Ser Gregor had any to begin with.

She shudders.

He was already a monster. For what other kind of creature could hold an eight year-old's face to the flames?

 _Although_ , Sansa thinks,  _there are plenty of monsters, then, disguised as men. Men who did terrible things, who raped and murdered and pillaged without thought, in the... in the name of their lords. In the name of men like Tywin Lannister. Is it the destiny of all men to become monsters?_

Yet, she could not make herself believe it was the destiny of all sweet boys, no matter what lesson Sandor Clegane tried to teach her. Her Bran will not be a monster. And Jon is hardly one either... despite the... conditions of his survival, she supposes one could call it. And her father, of course. And sweet young Rickon, what she remembers of him.

And even Sandor Clegane, himself, she belatedly adds.

_He had a capacity for gentleness beyond the reach of any beast._

Has.

He's alive.

By the Gods, but his anger. Some small, girlish notion inside of her rises up at the idea of Sandor Clegane finally facing down his brother, in the name of a maiden fair (she almost snorts derisively, she can imagine what tales Petyr has told people) locked away in a tower tall. And in her dream, when she tied her favor around his... it was his vambrace, wasn't it? She tries hard to tamp down on the thought, casting hard away the days when she would have giggled and flushed at the idea. But Sandor Clegane remains to be proven an untrue knight. Not even a knight at all.

( _Not that Petyr is much of a Lord Protector or Jon much of a bastard_ , she thinks.  _Knighthood, and all of that... it's all much too..._ )

And so he, too, stands in the path between Robert Strong and her tower. The thought gives her more comfort than it ought.

Should she write him again? He has not replied to her yet.  _But it has not yet been a day_ , she fervently thinks.

She cannot go to Petyr. He would know she has ways of communicating beyond the tower, and that would force her to sacrifice the North, and all those who are waiting for her there. But she should not write to Sandor again. Not without his response.

But...

She thinks to the conversation she overheard, between the Elder Brother and Petyr.

"I am Sansa Stark," she whispers to herself, shaking her head. "I am Sansa Stark, heir of Winterfell. I will speak words, and men will have to listen. I am not a silly child. I am the Lady of Winterfell."

Men listened to her father. She would make them listen to her. She would make them love her.

"The time to act is now." She clenches her hands at her sides, steadying her nerves with deep breaths. "No more waiting."

_And oh, how long I have waited._

This is quite a different game from exchanging false words with Jaime Lannister, speaking with Jon in her dreams. What was it Petyr told her, once? (And long ago, her mind fills in... long years. How they stretch and bend behind her, the future shimmering and uncertain at last, bellicose and a strange, tainted sense of hopefulness.)

_What did Petyr say? Petyr... or was that Littlefinger? Are they the same person, now?_

She laughs. It is acrid, bubbling up uneasily from her belly. It tastes like fear and blood and wanting.

_In the game of thrones, even the humblest pieces can have wills of their own. Sometimes they refuse to make the moves you've planned for them._

"It's quite a move..."

He had also told her to trust no one.

Except him.

The Elder Brother must have given the Hound sanctuary. If he would hide and clothe and shelter a man like Sandor Clegane for five, nay, six years, than perhaps she could find enough to trust him. The gold alone that the Elder Brother might have received from the Lannisters for betraying the location of their deserted dog.  _The Hound is dead_. And they spoke of... or were going to speak of... pressing matters.

_Trust no one._

But is that a strength or a weakness?

She had trusted him. And Cersei Lannister. And Joffrey. And where had that put her? Here, in this tower.

_But is it a weakness, trusting?_

Or does her anger and coldness make her brittle? Has it hollowed out her bones and left spaces for worse conditions? For rage and apathy and greed?  _Birds_ , she thinks. _Birds have hollow, brittle bones. And how they snap, easily, under the slightest pressure, and never learn to fly._  Sansa wonders if anyone has told that story about her yet. The bird with broken wings, who fell instead of flew. She is no bird, not to anyone but Sandor Clegane, but they did always say that she took flight the night of Joffrey's death...

Refusing to trust the Elder Brother will not save the people in the Vale. And Bran... if Bran woke her up to receive the letter, immediately...  _Dark wings, dark words_ , indeed. And her... other dreams. Of Sandor Clegane. They are not... like her others, but they may mean something else as well.

Ser Gregor Clegane is coming for her head, and that is the truth of it.

She needs to make a decision.

Logically, she can tell herself that Sandor Clegane still holds the desire to vanquish his monster of a brother, once and for all. Once, she had thought it the worst insult to decree him as _no true knight_.

She laughs, hands clasped tightly at her waist. She laughs, trembling, shaking her head.

"Make a decision..."

She sits at the table, hands flattened against the table.  _Make a decision_. She pulls out Jaime's letter, smoothing the parchment out under her fingers, tracing out the folds, nails raking over looped letters, careful flourishes.

_My departed sister knew of your survival, if only for the shortest time before her demise._

But how? Sansa thinks of who could know. Who Petyr's men are. Who could be bought. Which Lannister men were in the Vale at the time of her wedding, at her death. Who? Who?

 _Or perhaps not one of Petyr's men_ , she realizes.  _Perhaps one of the Lords Declarant._  Why should she assume that they would want to save her? Men only want her claim. Why should she think she could be free from having her survival sold?  _Gods_ , she thinks, rubbing her brow.  _You know that. You know that better than most._ How in all these years had she not...

These Lords Declarant were not unintelligent men. And Petyr's ploy, to bring them back up to the Eyrie for the wedding... it could be seen through. It was seen through.

The light. The light in the tower.

Was it all arranged then? The septa, the test? Was her downfall prearranged? Brokered? Paid for? Did nothing she did matter, at all, when all summed and totaled? 

 _Write to the Elder Brother_ , she chastises herself.  _If you trust no one at all, people will die. If the Elder Brother is false, then I will suffer, but no more than I already have. The smallfolk of the Vale need not suffer for Cersei's madness._

"I am Sansa Stark."

Willing her breath to even, she pulls out a sheaf of parchment. Opens the inkwell, pulls out her quill.

"I am Lady Stark."

The cloak hangs in her wardrobe. The cloak she was supposed to wear, to marry Harry the Heir, to become Sansa Stark, to then sacrifice Sansa Stark at the altar.

She need not wear it to her wedding to become it.

(A sacrifice, or Sansa Stark, she knows not.)  


* * *

  
He wakes to the she-wolf screaming, legs flailing violently inside her bedroll. "Bleeding hells, girl," he shouts, kicking the blankets from him. His joints creak and pop as he struggles to his feet, swinging his bad leg out to his side, struggling for balance as the damp morning air fought to unman him.

With a pang of morning soreness he feels a pang of doubt. Can he do this? He was no true knight to begin with. Not even a knight at all, and here he is thinking that his time on the Quiet Isle has served him well enough to mold him into the hero of some buggering song. Can't even get up in the morning without his leg staging a violent protest.

 _Well it doesn't matter now, does it? I_ am _doing this._

He's started up the mountain, with the she-wolf in tow. And she sure as hell won't be turning back. He won't be, either. He won't be coming down the mountain without Sansa Stark.

"Fuck!" the girl cries out, almost plaintively, struggling back into wakefulness as she grapples with her bedroll.

"Girl," he says, awkwardly kneeling, shaking her awake. Her hands reach out, trying to push him away, her fingers tense and clawed. "Girl!" He grabs her shoulder, and she slaps him, eyes opening a moment later. She stops fighting him a moment after that. "You awake now, little girl?" he sneers.

"I'm fine," she hisses. " _Hound_ ," she tacks on as an afterthought, sitting up and thrusting her hands out behind her to support herself. Panting slightly, she roughly takes a swipe at her cheeks, and Sandor realizes one side of her face is covered in a wetness that may be sweat, may be tears. The palm of her small hand coming back to rest on the ground, her face is now streaked with dirt and finely-ground rock instead. "The fuck are you looking at?" she grinds out, voice tight with a rippling undercurrent of emotion.

"Dirt on your face," he mutters.

"What?" she snaps.

"You have dirt on your face," he almost growls, struggling to his feet. Try to help the little brat, and this is what you get. "From when you were pretending you weren't crying in your sleep. Had a nightmare, didn't you? Fierce little wolf bitch."

"And what about you?" she snarls back, lithely getting to her feet. "The lamed and crippled dog. What are you even doing here? You've spent the past five years hiding under a cowl, and you were never a knight in the first place. Doubt Sansa ever liked you, you were such a fucking brute. Why the fuck would she want  _you_  coming to rescue her?"

He snorts, pressing the heel of his palm into the sore muscle as he limps out of the cave. "If I have the right of it, she wasn't too fond of you either. Or was it the other way around?"

"I'm her sister!" the girl shouts, following him. Sandor doesn't hesitate, when he passes through the tree line, to open his pants to take a piss. The girl doesn't seem fazed either, and just keeps shouting at him as he relieves himself.  _This one_ , he thinks.

"Yes," he says. "And the Mountain was my brother. Didn't mean much, did it? I should have been the one who killed him. Blood doesn't mean much, between brothers or sisters, if you don't make anything of it, girl. Or if you make the wrong thing of it."

He looks at her out the corner of his eye, tucking himself back into his pants. He can see her temper rise in the flush of her ruddy cheeks, shoulders rising and falling with every violent puff of mist from her parted mouth.

"What I am saying is that you and your pretty sister didn't get on much, when you were still in King's Landing together."

They didn't, much. Both their heads were filled with songs back then, and that's the truth of it, no matter what Arya Stark thought of herself as a child. She was just as naive and sheltered as the little bird, and life bit her on the ass just as hard. But he also knows from their time together in the Riverlands that the she-wolf cared for her sister. There was nothing between the Stark sisters like there had been between him and Gregor. No matter what the world tried to do to them, he doubts it could ever manage to mold them into monsters.

She explodes, then, off her feet and claws at the thick wool of his cloak.

"Fuck you!" she screams. Her face is all red, now, eyes pinched. She screams in frustration, in anger, in desperation, and he watches her become the eleven year-old, the Arya Stark he knew, again before his eyes. "Fuck you! I should have put it through your heart like you asked me! Fuck you!"

Sandor laughs. "Oh no, little girl. You hated me too much back then. But you hate me enough now."

"I should fucking kill you!" Her fingers catch in his tunic, and for a moment he wonders if she's going to climb him. Snarling, feeling something almost like anger rise up in him, he wraps his hands around her wrists and throws her off of him. "Don't you remember what you said about her?" she seethes, scrambling to her feet again.

She reaches for the small knife at her waist.

"I know where the heart is." She unsheathes it, and it glints, not menacingly, almost... calmly. She is calm now. She advances through the snow, holding the knife like it's the hand of an old friend. "You taught me that. I've done it so many times now."

"Then do it," Sandor says, lowly. It's a challenge, and he opens his arms wide for her to slip the knife through his heart. "Fucking  _do it_ , then. Rescue your sister yourself. You think I don't know that I deserve hell, girl? I've lived it. I've made it. So give it to me, then-"

"You stood there!" she shouts, but she does not advance. Tears, though, he thinks he sees springing up in her eyes. "You stood there and you let them beat her. Isn't that what you said? That you stood there in your white cloak and watched them beat her? My  _pretty sister_. I'm not daft, Clegane, not anymore. You're craven, dog. You couldn't even protect my sister. Unmanned-unmanned by a twelve year-old girl and a sadistic idiot. And then you just drank yourself out of your wits."

"And I was going to fuck her bloody, too. Don't you remember that?" he responds, arms still open. His leg shakes, and he thinks, dimly, that the rest of him might be shaking too. Even his voice? He can't tell.  _Bugger. Bugger the little bird and her little sister. Bugger the Starks. Bugger the Elder Brother._  "Rip her heart out and fuck her bloody."

"I said I'm not daft, Clegane!" she bellows. "I know why you fucking said it. Because you were  _sobbing_ , Clegane! Fucking sobbing! You were dying and it was my sister on your fucking twisted mind and you wanted me to kill you! So that's what you fucking said but I hated you so  _fucking_  much, Hound, so I just left you there."

"Yes, little girl-"

"I am not a girl-"

"And you know what? I knew she was here. In the Vale. The Elder Brother knew and I didn't go after her when I had the chance. You want to kill me for that?" He almost hopes she would. Kill him, take their supplies up the mountain. At least then the little bird would have a horse to ride down. And they wouldn't have to go to the trouble of caring for a lame dog who can barely walk in the morning. "Rip my heart out? Stick your pretty little knife there, through it? I'll take it. I  _want_  it."

It hasn't been like this in years. Or maybe it's been there, waiting, while the Elder Brother broke him down, piece by piece, and reset him in this new image, his own. Well Gregor tried that, and it didn't fucking work. The Hound is dead. And Sandor Clegane is no man of the cloth. But Sandor Clegane is a broken man all the same. Physically, and in the mind. He's dug graves. It's time he dug his own, for good. To make his rest even if, despite all the Elder Brother's  _good_  intentions, he cannot make peace.

He knows how he left Sansa Stark.

What peace can he ask from her?

"Still a coward," she mutters, angrily shoving the knife back into its sheath-missing, cutting her finger. She curses, dropping the weapon into the snow, runs her bleeding hand through her hair, an angry smear of red slashing at her hairline. When she speaks, her voice is empty. "You taught me to kill."

"You weren't much younger than I was, when I had my first kill."

She snorts, the emptiness breaking. "Do you think that's how it's supposed to be, then?"

He shrugs, lowering his arms at last, eyeing her warily. He knows her. He had a hand in creating her, just like the Elder Brother had a hand in shaping this new man that he has become. "It's how it is."

"Don't make it right." She tunnels her hands through her hair again, the muscles of her face tight. "I was a child. We were children."

"And then you weren't."

"And what about you?" she scowls. "Like you weren't a boy? Like you didn't... let people make you into... and you never woke up screaming, never woke up reaching for a weapon, never got..."

"Why do you think I drank so much, girl?" He pauses. "Woman."

"Arya," she corrects him, after a moment of hesitation, falling to her knees in the snow to finally, gently, sheath her knife. "So the nightmares... they're natural?" Her hands are palms-up in her lap, eyes heavily scrutinizing her cut, how the blood clots in the crease where her fingers join the meat of her hands.

"Wouldn't recommend turning to wine to cure them, but they are... Arya." He swallows hard on the word. "You'll turn out to be a brute, just like me." He swallows again, choking down a lump in his throat. "Your pretty sister won't like it."

"No," Arya whispers. "She always told me to act like a lady."

She wipes her hand on the snow, drenching it with blood, before scooping up a ball of it in her hands and using it to scrub her face clean. She looks up at Sandor, eyes red, but her face clear. But says nothing.

"What?" he asks. A moment ago she was trying to kill him, but now he offers her his hand.

And she takes it and stands, brushing the snow from her leggings.

She shrugs.

"The Hound is dead."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comments are very much appreciated, but thank you so much for reading to the end of the chapter!


	10. The Truth Will Out

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Elder Brother reads a letter, more truths are revealed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **A/N:** A/N: I'm not going to try to make excuses, but those of you who follow on tumblr know well enough that my real life has been a bitch the past few months between school and my family life. I've finally settled into the summer and the stress seems to be settling down, so hopefully I'll be able to regain some sort of normal updating routine again. 
> 
> Thanks to everyone who has commented! I'm going to try to reply and thank each and every one of you individually.
> 
> And a big thanks goes out to my beta, tumblr user headtrip-honey.
> 
>  **TW:** Allusions to past abuse.

The Elder Brother wakes to a sharp sound breaking against his window—loud enough to even be heard through the woolen curtains drawn tight to ward off the chill. The room is plain and unadorned, but even still the furnishings are not cheap. Lord Baelish had housed him with proper deference to his skills as a healer, but no more than that. He was still a brother of the Quiet Isle, and the room reflected his life's chosen austerity.

Years of living as a soldier allow him to rise quickly, crossing the room in three paces to throw back the curtains.

"Blasted…"

 _A raven?_ Snow swirls through a ragged wind around the poor creature, and it squawks plaintively until the Elder Brother unlatches the glassed panes and lets it in, assuming the irascible animal must have been turned about in the storm. (A courtesy, the Elder Brother realizes a moment too late, that will now leave him with a discontented bird in his chambers in the middle of the night.) But to his surprise, the raven hops from the sill to the table near the fireplace, and with an almost-human grace, tilts its head and extends its leg.

"I'm not the Maester here, bird." Was it lost?  _Obviously_. What poorly-trained beast could have come to the Gates of the Moon at such an hour, misdirected by the storm? What Maester would send out a weakling in weather such as this?  _A desperate one_. But even still, Petyr Baelish would not look upon the Elder Brother intercepting a missive without suspicion. A lying man looks for false truths in everyone, even a man of the cloth.

_Especially, perhaps… he did keep company with men such as Pycelle…_

The raven flaps its wings impatiently, determinedly sticking out its leg.

The Elder Brother wishes he could just throw the bird back out into the storm, but thinks a little better of himself, and a little worse of the off-course animal. The Crone, in some well-placed chastisement, rattles the wind against the windows.

He is a man of the gods… and he knows a sign when he sees one.

Hesitating only slightly, the Elder Brother unties the missive from the raven's leg. It is simple parchment, and does not bear a seal, ribbon, or other pageantry. (It is then, that the Elder Brother thinks, that it could not possibly have been meant for Lord Baelish.) It does, in fact, bear  _his_ title.

But how did the raven know to come to his rooms?

 _A sign. It is gods-willed. Perhaps one of the gods brought the raven off course, to this very room_.  _Any other letter addressed to me might otherwise be read or be cause for suspicion, or questioning._

"Yes, yes, I can take a hint… just open it."

_To the Elder Brother of the Quiet Isle,_

_I am writing to inform you not of a death, but of a life. The hand than pens this letter belongs to Sansa Stark. I have no way of proving this to you, as we have never encountered each other before and I have no other physical means of proving the veracity of this claim, as many of my physical belongings have been deprived of me._

_What I do know, however, is that you have a man by the name of Sandor Clegane under your charge, who can verify my claim. I have sent him a similar missive as this, enclosed with a lock of my hair, which has been described by many to resemble my mother's—Tully red._

_But the matter of this letter is not merely to inform you of my continued existence, but to explain it. The story of my demise, considering your residence in the Vale, is probably one you have heard already. How I survived, and continue to survive, is a story of which only four people are aware—Petyr Baelish, Lyn Corbray, a maid under the employ of Lord Baelish tasked with my care, and myself—and now you, and Clegane._

_It begins, of course, with Lord Baelish's movements on the board in this game of thrones. As you may already know, I was under his protection for many years under the guise of his bastard daughter, Alayne…_

The Elder Brother sits heavily at the table, pausing to light another candle to illuminate the looped script better for his aging eyes. The girl writes on, confirming more and more of his suspicions through her concise, articulate account of her years living under Baelish's precisionist and obsequious gaze. Her story was over a page of carefully-worded explanations, and the Elder Brother reads them carefully before moving onto the part of the story he did not yet know.

_It was Petyr's plan to have Robert Arryn, the sweet boy, killed while I was abed after my wedding feast. With Yohn Royce's injury there was no way he could have made it up the mountain, and Robert's illness would not allow for a return trip, either. Ser Shadrich, another one of Petyr's men, was to murder Robert while my marriage to Harry was being consummated, and while Robert was under the Royce's care. He would then pin the deed on the Royces, and topple them to gain the sympathies of the Lords Declarant and gain unquestionable control over the Vale._

_However… I would not stand for the murder of the boy. I ensured that I would fail the examination of the Septa, foolishly believing that I would be able to explain my way out of it to Petyr, therefore buying my sweet cousin more time. But I was wrong. Petyr was closer to the end of his rope than I had estimated, and I paid the price for my machination._

_I played the part of the fool, the coward, screaming my innocence until Petyr ordered his men to seize me. Then I fled, the only direction being up the tower stairs._

_I have not left in these five years past._

_The purpose of this letter is not an attempt to solicit a rescue—my wellbeing is assured, for the time being, so long as Petyr's suspicions are not aroused. Through other sources, I have ascertained that you have been summoned by Lord Baelish to repair the damage done to my cousin by his own hand. I recommend, if you truly wish to save the boy, that you quietly make a friend of the Royces. I will endure. Sweetrobin's fragile health, however, may not, and what Baelish may be driven to do in the event of his death and Harry's son's ascension to Lord of the Vale is something to be feared._

_I am also writing to warn you that there will be Lannister men coming to the Vale, although perhaps not under Lannister colors. Warn Sandor, but tell him not to fear. It is not him that they seek. There are greater dangers coming, for which you should all prepare. A time may come when I may need to be brought down from my tower to remove Lord Baelish from power to ensure that these dangers will not be the end of us all. Winter is not coming, Elder Brother. It is here, and if we are all to survive, the pack must stick together._

_Lastly—the bird knows how to find me. Any return post may be sent through him._

_Sansa Stark_  
Lady of Winterfell  
Warden of the North

The Elder Brother slumps down in his chair, letting his body slink down tiredly, his neck tipping over the chair back until he can stare at the ceiling, before lifting his hands to scrub at his face.

This is not the foolish young girl that Sandor had been infatuated with, nor some helpless soul. It would have been so much less complicated had she been. He pinches his nose, and then admonishes himself for the thought. Less complicated yes, but that is no reason to wish the girl to be a powerless victim.

Besides, an ally is much more useful. He only prays that Sandor and the Lady Arya will be able to handle this revelation coming from Sansa herself, as well. And what she spoke of the Royces, and the poor little Lord Arryn… it was much to think on for the hour of the wolf.

(The Brother realizes the joke the gods have played him, and chuckles, now mentally exhausted as well as physically so.)

He relaxes into the chair, eyeing the now-resting bird perched at the foot of his bed. After a moment, the thought strikes him—

—the Lady Stark had mentioned a letter to Sandor. A letter which he could not have received.

Quietly, the Elder Brother dons his robes and heads towards Sandor's chambers to collect the letter before one of Lord Baelish's inquisitive maids finds it and passes it along to her master.  
  


* * *

  
Sleep does not come easily to her. Thoughts whir vibrantly though her head, and Sansa sits at her candle-lit vanity braiding and unbraiding and re-braiding her hair for hours, thinking vaguely on the hank that must, by now, rest in the palm of Sandor Clegane's hand.

It is strange. She hasn't thought of him for many years, until these past few weeks. Out of shame, Sansa supposes, looking back upon the days where the Hound was the stock character in her many fantasies, the days where she dreamed up a kiss and made herself believe it to be truth, as if the Hound were only another character in one of her songs. Gods, how foolish.

She had wanted the beast in her bed. Little Sansa Stark had been surrounded by lions and mockingbirds, by beautiful liars and cruelty shaded by the shadow of a crown, and  _the Hound_ , the man who held her down and held a knife to her throat, was the one who came out favorably. The one who her childish, fear-frozen mind chose to shoe-horn into the role of the song-and-story protector, her true knight. All that she could think of was the song that he  _took,_  the kiss that he  _took_.

But now, with time and separation as her teacher, what interests her more is the  _man_ , the man who  _left_ the cloak. A fragile man under steel bones, a boy, really, no more or less than she had been a girl. She was the little bird in the same way he was the Lannister's dog. Or Alayne, she hopes, in the way that he is a man of the cloth.

 _Only on the surface_.

Only after her pillowtalk with Randa did she learn. The woman was no flatterer like the ladies of King's Landing, no subscriber to the mendacities of courtly love, the glittering lies that Sansa had clung to for so long. But Randa did not rip them from Sansa, but instead pulled them from her grasp, laughing kindly, directing the young girl under her tutelage until Sansa blossomed like a winter rose. Randa had done her a great kindness, Sansa thinks, and taught her the most important lesson: how she should expect to be treated, and how to have romance without excuses.

She does not have to romanticize the Hound in order to be thankful for him. And she does not have to excuse what he did to her in order to be thankful for him… or to romanticize him, either, she thinks, letting her eyes glaze over just enough to turn her reflection in the mirror into something more… heated.

Sansa Stark is human, and she is allowed to have complicated emotions.

Although, she thinks, laughing drolly as her fingers twine through her auburn hair, it would be nice not to have them so late into the night.

Her mind had raced the night before her wedding, as well. Gods be good, but she had been so  _sure_. Her plan had been so…

"Father, you know there are many ways that a maiden may lose her maidenhead, and you know that Randa has often taken me riding these past months, it must be that," she had intended to say, with her head bent, eyes peeled upwards and widened with honest fear. And he would have smiled, and found a way in his head to placate Anya Waynwood.

And they would have exited the room together, with Petyr so sure of his triumph. And Sansa would have held her head high, knowing she had bested him, had secured his downfall. He would have gone to Lady Waynwood, to besmirch her, to remind her of the debt owed to him by her house.

There were so few people at the Eyrie with them for the nuptials, and Sansa knew how to turn that to her advantage. Oh, she had a plan, and it would have worked perfectly. Lady Waynwood would have wanted to interrogate her in private, and Sansa would have assured Petyr that she was perfectly capable of handling it.

Sansa had planned to reveal all—to win Lady Anya to her side, and persuade her to help Sansa name Petyr Baelish as the man who took her maidenhead. With the backing of Lady Waynwood, she would have brought him to justice before the Lords Declarant and freeing the Waynwoods of their debt and the Vale of the Lord of Harrenhal and Sansa of her father and his roaming hands and hot breath on her neck.  _Gods,_ it had been such a good plan.

But she had judged wrong.

She had thought Petyr—the man who called her Cat and sought to possess her in the visage of her mother, the man who obsessed over her and wanted to own her, the man she was certain had allowed  _her_ , Sansa Stark, to become his one weakness—would believe her. That there had been no scurrilous transgression.

"Father, you're hurting me," she had cried when his fingers pressed into the fragile undersides of her wrists. (Gods, there was no strange gentleness, none at all, only the illusion of control now wrested completely, along with his sanity.)

She cannot even remember the words, that flew from his mouth in heaps, shattering around her feet before rising up like iron bars, spittle flying from his mouth as he yelled, and yelled, and yelled.

 _Whore_ , of course, among other words that men like to use.

Sansa had misjudged.

He had not forgiven her. It was only her mother betraying him again. ( _Betrayal,_ and Sansa almost laughs. It is far away enough now that it is almost funny, in her acquired sense of surreal humor.) He had wanted to possess her—her mouth, her hips, her breasts, and most of all, her cunt.

From the outside, it could have been a song—the young highborn maiden rescued by the lowborn man, seeking to repair his misdeeds towards her mother. The maiden, naïve and petty, takes what the man will give her, and gives nothing back. Instead, she gives it all away to the handsome knight who catches her fancy. The man, mad with grief, cries to the maiden— _How could you? I loved you!_ — and the maid, not so maidenly anymore, filled with shame for her vanity, flings herself from highest room in the tallest tower, her cries filling the Vale for years to come.

It is this version, Sansa thinks, hands braiding her hair once more, that Petyr believes, with only a slight modification.

She is his maiden in the tower, filled with shame and grief, waiting for him to let her down from her place of atonement, to welcome her back with forgiving arms, to find her gracious and grateful.

The version, Sansa Stark knows, that Sandor Clegane would never believe.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Reviews are very much appreciated, but thanks for reading all the way to the bottom! (And for sticking with me, even after months without an update.)


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